Lente's Burden
by Spikey44
Summary: Once there was a Viera, queen and mother. Then she fell and was forgotten. Now, as the Viera face the end of their days, she rises anew. Lente yearns, her burden to a new bearer she will give. Her power passes to one who walks with the humes. Balthierfran
1. Chapter 1

**Lente's Burden**

_Disclaimer: all known and recognisable names, places, and characters property of Square Enix. I just like playing with them. _

**In the beginning there was a beginning:**

In a dark place, filled with green, there was a stirring. The leaves whispered. The underbrush shivered and the great trees groaned in their sediment rooting. In the dark place she who had lost her name was listening.

There were words and she heard them; syllables hammered out in the beating heart of the dark wood.

_Viera are born from the Wood but that is not the only end they may choose._

In the dark she who had forgotten her name smiled. She had waited a very long time, even though she had long since lost all sense of the passing of the years. All things in a circle; the cycle ever winding through Ivalice's turning with each dusk and every dawn; turning and turning.

She has waited throughout the turning of many a year; she has been forgotten by all; she had all but forgotten herself.

She is Lente; she is mother. She is walker of the Way and keeper of the Word. Her tears from bleeding eyes did fall as crystal. Once the Wood to her will did grow, bend; shift.

She is Lente and today she is listening. She hears the words that will begin the new cycle that is also the old cycle. She hears her daughters weeping; they have lost their way.

She is Lente and when she moved the forest moved with her and the wild blooms blossomed in her hair. She wears lichen girdle and gown of fern; she is as the wood is and shall soon be, and thus she is neither fair nor foul. She is all things that lurk, prowl, or linger under the deep and shadowed boughs of the dark and verdant forests.

_Viera are born from the Wood but that is not the only end they may choose. _

The echoes in her ears tell her that years had since passed since she had first heard that defiant whisper. It was so hard for her now to tell; she moves in centuries, not seconds. Time has no real meaning in her forest. The sunlight rarely brakes through the canopy, and the humes have long since forgotten this realm.

Once kings would come to kiss her feet; once conquerors would crawl through the filth of her forest to beg her wisdom and men would fight great battles to prove themselves worthy of her bower. That time is not this one, Lente knows this. Ivalice, like Lente herself, is no longer young.

_Viera are born from the Wood but that is not the only end they may choose._

Hark but such whispers are like a call to arms to Lente's sense starved ears; there is one among her children who treads a new path, but one that is older than humes can reckon time. Through the forest Lente moves and the forest with Lente moves too.

She is mother and Walker of the Way, that is all ways in one, and she is keeper of the Word that all the forests of the Viera have now forgotten. She is Lente and she hears her children weeping the tears that only she must weep.

Once more to the turning of hume Ivalice she must venture. She must speak the Word and find the one fit to carry her burden in her stead.

Thus it is, that when Lente finally stepped free of the forest's dark embrace for the first time in seven hundred years and the sun, lost to memory long forgotten, fell upon her golden and warm, she screamed and the Wood screamed with her.

It was a beginning - and it began, as it would surely end, in pain and fear.

* * *

**Imperial City Archades: 708 O.V. **

Balthier scribbled another equation onto the parchment before him, using his fingers as a counting aid as he performed the slightly more complex mathematical gymnastics required silently in his head. He had an answer all right; the troubling factor was that he lacked a suitable question.

Rising to his feet Balthier abandoned his calculations and wandered over to the blackboard he had erected on one wall of the huge chamber on the seventieth floor of the Draklor tower. Etched across the slate in white chalk was a design matched in its intricacy only by its enigmatic source. Well, technically, Balthier knew its origin – he had put it there himself – what he did not know was what the bloody blue blazes the thing was supposed to be.

It was disconcerting, especially as he felt certain that this rather fetching design contained within its whorls, spirals, and elegant lines considerable power. Power, no matter its derivation, always made Balthier nervous. He almost moved to wipe away the mark, but did not, because he knew that erasing the sign from the board would not erase it from his mind, where the blasted thing had become indelibly engraved.

Balthier was still standing scrutinising the peculiar design when a woman entered the chamber from the ascending stair. The woman was tall, thin and severe in countenance and wore the lavender and white gown of a fully sanctioned and high ranking senator. She moved noiselessly but the cold shiver and raising of the hackles at the back of Balthier's neck warned him of her approach.

'M'lady Etteran,' Balthier turned to her and smiled crookedly, 'I didn't expect you to grace my humble abode for at least another sennight.'

The Lady Madrigalise Etteran quirked an eyebrow, 'You hide your displeasure well, master Balthier. One might even think you were not most vexed to see me.'

She moved into the chamber taking in the surroundings in one keen glance. Her gaze sweeping over the desk over-flowing with paperwork Balthier refused to do, the table with his notes and abacus, the half-dissected Rook engine with thought-interface control mechanism exposed to further scrutiny, and lastly the board with the chalk design.

'You must tell me how you always know it is I, even when I take pains to obscure my approach.' Etteran said as she settled behind Balthier's more or less unused desk. She settled easily, making herself instantly at home.

Balthier sauntered across the room, examining the ingrained patina of glossair oil coating his palms with mild displeasure as he did so. 'Oh your stealth does you credit, madam.'

He said avoiding the question completely; telling the woman that there were few other people alive who could make a shiver dance up his spine at the mere mention of their name, would give her far too much satisfaction than he had any desire to do. He settled to lean against a clear corner of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. He made sure to affix to his face his most facetious smirk.

'What can I do for you today, m'lady?' He quirked an eyebrow, 'I am fairly sure Draklor is not due another civil inspection.'

Etteran cupped her sharp chin in the cradle of her palms and rested her pointy elbows on the desk top. In doing so she dislodged a tower of papers and in consequence sent a trapped cog rolling off the desk to the floor. It rolled in a tight circle for a moment before Balthier slapped his foot down over it. Etteran waited to answer until she was sure she had his full attention once more.

'You are always under inspection, Bunansa. Your every move is watched, analysed, considered, weighted and pondered, by a myriad of observers.' She told him seriously even though she smiled.

Balthier shrugged, 'The perils of popularity.' He flapped his hand indifferently and shrugged as he re-crossed his arms over his chest. 'What of it?'

Etteran's teeth flashed smoothly in another perfectly artificial smile, 'You need to be leashed Bunansa; leashed, contained, and ultimately tamed.'

Balthier felt his lips quirk up at the edges, 'My dear madam Senator if I did not know better I might wonder if you are not propositioning me for some strange and lewd act.'

Etteran gave him a look as unbending as granite. Balthier smothered the urge to grin with pleasure for having caught the hateful woman off guard.

Still smiling ever so slightly Balthier let his gaze float easily away to the night sky falling in through the massive open balcony of the chamber. The night air carried a sharp chill, but that might just as easily be attributable to his present company.

'There are many who would say I am already tamed.' He murmured casually not looking at Etteran. 'I am considered a turn coat; the pirate dissident who sold his principles to build airships for the Empire he once despised.'

Etteran's clear grey eyes pierced through his laconic words. 'In all times and places idiots abound. I am not one of them.' Etteran began rifling through the papers on his desk, 'I think that I would have you killed if I could. I dare say it would be the most expedient insurance one could have against another turning of your coat.'

Balthier chuckled, 'I'm quite difficult to kill, madam.' He didn't bother to rise to her bait and grow offended at this most casual of threats against his life. All their prior meetings had proceeded in this vein as well. It had become something of game; a nasty, back-biting game, to be sure, but a game all the same.

'And I feel I should point out,' Balthier added in the same easy tones, 'that my questionable loyalties aside, I am a rather efficient worker, _and_ at the very least, I am not insane or given to overblown ambition as was my father.'

Etteran sighed, 'Ambition can be harnessed; unbridled and fickle free will is a menace to society.'

Balthier coughed against a laugh and tried to smother it with a fist to his mouth, 'M'lady, do not take offence, but one wonders how in the name of all that is holy, you managed to get elected to the senate in the first place.'

Etteran flicked a long fingernail against the creased paper on which one of his discarded drawings stretched out in faded ink. Her regard was mild and chill when she looked up at him again. 'I am very good at putting my _point_ across in any disagreement.'

Her lethal gaze skewered Balthier to the spot. 'House Solidor may have lost its venom but there are still serpents in the capital, Bunansa.'

'Yes,' Balthier drawled, 'I rather think I am looking at one now.'

'I rather think you are too.' The senator smiled. 'And little flighty birds should watch themselves very carefully.' She licked her thin lips with a pale and strangely pointed tongue. 'You are a thorn in my side, Bunansa. I will either find the means to control you, or I will destroy you. Be aware of that.'

Etteran rose from the desk in stately fashion and just like that the unscheduled visitation was at a close. Balthier straightened up from the desk as well. He walked her across the chamber to the stairs once more, partly because he knew his chivalry irritated the woman and partly because he wanted to make sure the harridan actually left before he turned his back.

'Well,' he said cheerfully once they reached the stairs, 'As always m'lady Etteran it has been a scintillating pleasure being threatened by you. We simply must do it again some time.'

Madrigalise Etteran flicked her cold gaze up and then down his body dismissively, bobbed her head in perfunctory sign of feigned respect and farewell, before turning and oozing back down the stairs the way she had come in. She called back to him from the bottom of the stairs.

'Oh we shall, Bunansa, we shall do this again very soon.'

As soon as he was sure she had gone Balthier hurried back across the chamber and out through the wide balcony. He stopped on the edge overlooking the sprawl of the city far below. He looked all the way down and finally allowed free the shiver he had suppressed while in Etteran's thrall.

'Bugger,' he muttered, 'Bugger, bugger, bugger.'

Balthier plucked at the chain he wore around his neck and fished the clear crystal shard pendant that hung from that chain out from the confines of his vest. He curled his fingers around the pendant.

'Well Fran, this is a fine to-do.' He told the pendant that contained a faint hint of green in the centre, like the captured ghost shimmer of a summer woodland. After a few moments the cold started to bite through his clothes and Balthier retired back inside. He went back to the blackboard and picked up the chalk.

He started to sketch out another sigil in a spare corner of the board; fingers dancing across the slate with a mind of their own. Within moments he had a rather fetching pentacle to go along with his strange flights of imagination.

'If the Wood is time and the air is motion, what then is the question they answer?' He murmured to himself and did not know why he did so.

* * *

**Balfonheim Port 708 O.V.**

The scent of salt and brine hung heavy in the night air and distantly the ocean sang her own lullaby as the bells of fishing boats jangled a faint chorus. The hubbub of the port of Balfonheim, now mostly rebuilt and in some areas even improved, formed an inconstant hissing wall of sound that prickled against Fran's ears as she stood in the tiny attic boarding room.

'What was her name?' Fran gazed down at the body sprawled across the narrow bed. She reached out to close the dead woman's eyes.

'Fantl.' Rikken's voice was a deep bass rumble behind her where he lingered in the doorway clearly unwilling to make the commitment of entering the room. 'She and her hume had only been int' port a few weeks; seemed happy enough. Quiet like, but then yer Viera always are.'

Fran arched a brow, 'Not always.' She demurred before crouching down beside the body of the dead Viera. 'What of her hume?'

Rikken shrugged uncomfortably, 'Just a wet eared boy; he was down int' White Cap most of the day scoutin' out marks. Came back t' room about noon an' started such a fuss that t'rest of us came arunning.' Rikken nodded his head towards the body. 'Found her like that.'

'I see.' Fran tucked Fantl's arm, which hung limply over the edge of the bed, back against her side. She pulled the sheet up over the body and observed in a dispassionate way, how the sheet rose in a gentle hump over Fantl's mid-section. Fran's ear twitched; this was a double tragedy.

'Never seen a pregnant Viera before,' Rikken commented with crashing lack of tact. 'Caused a bit of a stir in port – mostly with the other Viera we got here; lot of interest there.' The pirate's look could only have been described as significant. 'Almost like them were jealous.'

Fran rose to her feet and turned to stare at Rikken until the hume dropped his gaze to the bare boards of the attic floor. 'Little cause for envy now.' She pointed out simply. 'The babe is no more, as too goes Fantl.' She reached out for the scrap of paper that had been found by the body. 'Poison, was it?'

'Viper venom mixed with boiling hot wine,' Rikken replied promptly not looking up to meet her gaze. 'Quick death, I reckon.'

'Doubt it, I do, that the death was any less painful for its swiftness.' Fran murmured sadly looking down at the sad sheet swathed form.

'S'pose yer right, at that,' Rikken admitted awkwardly. 'Tis all so strange, we don't have no trouble from Viera usually, that's why we thought to call yer. Thought maybe yer'd know what-all the poor gel was vexed about.'

Fran unfolded the note and read the scant words scratched upon the crumbled parchment, which was water-marked with salt scented tears.

_The burden was too great; Lente cries as I fail. May Wood and Word forgive me; I was not strong enough. _

Fran blinked, 'Lente? She would be so bold as to write the name of She, but not to carry child to term?'

Fran's hand moved of its own accord to the half crystal shard she wore around her neck, and from within its depths flashed a shimmer of palest sky blue. Her fingers closed around the crystal tear absently. She looked back down at the sheet draped form.

'Lente,' Fran's ears twitched, 'What does the Mother fallen have to do with this sad state?'


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Hello everyone and thank you for brilliant response to this new story; nice to ''see'' so many familiar people back again and greet some new folks too ;) Special thanks to Franoncrack and Laertes, who I cannot thank by review reply and to Lente's No. 1 Fan and Matheous of the Wood, as well. I sincerely hope you all enjoy this story. _

_Spikey44_

* * *

**Upon the myriad paths of humes:**

She walked for many miles under the blue sky and the beating sun. The ground beneath her feet from rock to sand to grass to stone did change and change again. Shale and slate bit into the delicate balls of her feet and from her blood did lichen and moss bloom in her wake.

There was much noise, much chaos and vibrancy in the sundry and myriad paths of humes, and it seemed to her that all the ways in all Ivalice had become those of the Humes. It was sorrow to her to see and hear and feel what those youngest of Ivalice's children had made of their mother's bounty. She heard the bone wearily echoes of war and bloodshed, famine and disease, and a hundred thousand petty cruelties carved upon each path she trod.

It made her sad to her heart and soul; so little the humes had learned…..or was it more true to say that they had simply forgotten?

And if it be so, what then became of the teachers? What of the elder children of Ivalice; those charged with the answers to Hume questions?

Had the children of Ivalice truly become so terribly lost? How could they have been led so sorely astray as to forget the duties they owed one to another?

She wandered far and wandered wide and upon her trails she saw Moogles engaged in their endless, joyful toils, but even those faithful, ancient cousins of the blood did not recognise her. They fled from her and the Wood and Green she brought with her. They fled from the lost truth she embodied.

The Nu Mou fell to their knees, covering their eyes and wailing when she came across the wise ones on the mountain paths filled with snow and ice and wailing whispers. The Nu Mou knew her and spoke her name as she passed them. She smiled upon them as she went and the tears the Nu Mou shed froze in the icy gale.

She would have liked to stop and talk to the wise ones, but she saw that they now wore the cloth of one of the Named Ones, the maybe gods of the outer realms, and she grew sad for them; sad that they would give their wisdom in service to but one god in a teaming ocean of celestial stars. So far we have all fallen, she thought with regret.

Kerwon's icy tears told her much, as did the wailing gales. The cracked fissures rent deep in the Silver Floe showed her much harrowing truth in their purple black and fathomless depths. Word forgotten; purpose lost and balance knocked askew.

Lente wept anew to see the great mother and her children so lost. It seemed to her that the world screamed in pain and confusion.

'What of the sacred star,' Lente asked mother Ivalice, in sorrow. 'What of the elements all in balance and the races of Ivalice joined in their constituent parts; what of the whole that is you, O bountiful mother? What of Ivalice if the Word has been lost?'

Sundered, Ivalice did whisper to her in wailing gale twisting her hair and cutting ice rock under her delicate feet. The star is fallen, the truth is lost, the answers go unquestioned, the humes run rampant and your children fail you and I both.

Lente stood upon the ice and silvered floe of Kerwon, 'My children?'

Abandon the purpose set them, and the Wood is wrong; the Wood is twisted. The Wood dies and the Viera wither under poisoned boughs and caged canopy; there will be no child born of Viera while Wood and Viera both do rot alive.

'How can it be so?' Lente asked as the ice upon her head did gather to coat each strand of hair, and frost crystals upon her skin did form a lattice shield of biting armour.

Betrayal, the mother told her.

'What betrayal is this?' Lente's tears fell as diamond, more precious than any rock of the earth. 'Whose betrayal has so thrown askew the sacred balance?'

Yours, mother Ivalice told her in the whip crack brutality of shattering crevice, Yours and Raithwall's.

* * *

**Imperial City Archades: Draklor Laboratory 708 O.V.**

The corridors of Draklor had not been designed with a homey aesthetic in mind. The cold steel walls veined in blue or red light, depending on which bulkhead was operative at the time, seemed designed to intimate. Balthier, who was not the sort to be easily intimated, now found himself considering whether to change the lighting system to something less aggravating; green, perhaps, or maybe a diffuse yellow? Balthier somehow doubted anyone would intimated by the colour yellow.

Then again the entire Imperial elite had nearly been brought to rack and ruin by a glowing triangle with a penchant for speaking in rhyming couplet, so perhaps given enough opportunity anything could be intimidating.

In the last eight months since his investiture as director of aviation and engineering Balthier had made absolutely no attempt to enforce his will on the running of Draklor; as far as he was concerned that was the Senate and Larsa's concern. He was only here to build airships, or in lieu of actually building the buggers, at the very least fix the mistakes his father had made.

This had led to some confusion among the other department directors who had assumed that one Bunansa was much like another and thus had resigned themselves to being under the oppressive thumb of yet another brilliant lunatic with such haste they had seemed disappointed to find Balthier completely uninterested in either oppression or domination.

In real terms Balthier's lack of intra-departmental influence meant that Draklor looked very much like it had always looked (but with far fewer mastiffs – Balthier loathed the bastard things and getting rid of them had been his only foray into exerting undue influence on the running of the tower).

Still change had occurred in a much more subtle manner – for one thing Draklor in daylight was now always filled with people; final year Akademy students, foreign exchange students mostly from Bhujerba, Elite soldiers loitering in the hopes of earning extra Gil as test pilots, and graduate engineers hoping for tenure. There were also all the medical staff involved in the care and treatment of the Nabradian patients (floors two through twenty of the tower had been given over to this purpose alone and there was talk of making Draklor a dedicated medical facility and outsourcing the other departments elsewhere).

While it was not unusual per se for a research hub to be filled with people, it had not been the norm while Cid concocted his evil schemes. The old man had been a paranoid old bugger come the end of his tenure – plus their were few people who had wanted to work with a cackling lunatic who spent more time conversing with thin air than he did engaging with reality.

It was different now. Draklor no longer had a purely military remit. The lab was now required to report to the senate as well as the ministry of law regards the goings on within the tower's many corridors of power.

It was all very different from Doctor Cid's day……..or at least that was what Balthier wanted all those suspicious eyed observers to conclude and so far, with the exception of that damned harpy Etteran, he had done a creditable job of deceiving senate and Emperor alike.

Draklor under Balthier was thusly an open book; anyone could walk off the street (assuming they had the chops to make it to Grand Central in the first place) and explore the floors of the tower to their heart's content. Admittedly if Draklor was an open book it was a book with dangerously sharp edges and the distinct risk to the reader that they might experience a small explosion, or even the occasional _implosion_, from time to time, but transparency was the key.

(Balthier had long since learned that the best way to keep a secret was to hide it in plain sight, after all).

And speaking of secrets……..

Balthier stopped before the door at the end of the corridor on floor sixty-eight. The door was still marked with the tiny metal plaque that read simply: CBD. Fishing out his key card and stifling a yawn Balthier unlocked door and entered the old man's office.

The small room was cluttered with the detritus of Cid's abandoned sanity; shelves of books grown furry with dust, a desk filled with discarded maps of the places he had visited in life, old journals filled with snatches of thought and recollection that had survived the purge of all things Doctor Cid that had occurred after Bahamut's fall. Some of the mementos were familiar to Balthier, others not, but all remained preserved like a permanent monument to the former chief of Draklor staff. Balthier had not changed a thing in all this time, not even to change the initials etched onto the door, and had no intention of doing so either.

Standing just inside the doorway Balthier crossed his arms over his chest and fixed his gaze on the red glowing dot of light he could see in the far corner behind the metal file cabinet.

'Come here Smith.' He commanded in authoritative tone.

There was a soft mechanised whirring sound and with great reluctance, which almost bespoke hume-sentiment, one of his father's thought-interface engine powered Rook's floated into view.

'Bloop,' The Rook's small sound could almost, _almost_, have been ascribed the characteristic of speech, or some kind of deliberate communication, was it not for the fact that machines were not alive.

Balthier frowned. 'You've been dusting again, I see.'

Stepping into the CBD study Balthier let the door slide noiselessly shut behind him and walked over to the desk, sliding into the chair. The Rook hovered in the air before the desk with its feather duster attachment, an incongruously bright chocobo yellow, sticking out of its tiny laser gun turret.

'Bloop,' said Smith the Rook.

Balthier sighed and pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, tipping his head back against the back of his father's leather chair. 'What did I tell you about leaving the engineering floors?' he asked tiredly. 'Do you want to be turned into scrape metal, hm?'

'Bl-bloop,' said the Rook and the feather duster drooped in distraught fashion as the Rook bobbed miserably in the air.

Balthier pursed his lips; he felt like a right bastard for what he had to say next, but sometimes the truth was a bitter pill. 'If anyone discovers that you are capable of self-programming and actualisation you will be destroyed.'

In some ways Balthier knew he should feel profoundly foolish addressing a machine as one might a person, except of course, that 'Smith' was not a machine – or at least not_ just_ a machine.

'Bloooopppp.' Said Smith and various small lights buzzed around the vaguely wheel cap shaped mechanism's undercarriage. Balthier had ascertained that this lightshow denoted distress.

'Oh not by me,' he waved his hand to dismiss the notion, 'But my learned colleagues and the senate watchdogs are not like to be pleased to discover that Doctor Cid was not satisfied only with his plan to deify himself with Manufacted Nethicite but also sought to take the part of a god and give sentience to machines.'

Bl….blop-bloop,' Smith flashed a few more coloured lights in a pattern that presumably had a meaning but Balthier had yet to ascertain what it was. The Rook floated over to one of the book shelves and began to dust the tomes with the duster, disturbing the thick grey pelt of accumulated dust.

'Stop that.'

Balthier shook his head and closed his tired eyes. When he had discovered this thought-interface technology his father had pioneered Balthier had been concerned to say the least. He had made it his duty to understand the principle of the mechanism and then remove all the interface components from the Ramora's, Cutters, Rooks and everything else Cid had tried to control via his own thoughts alone. It was so typical of his father to try and make thinking machines in his own image; Cid just couldn't countenance the notion of independent thought not his own.

In contrast Balthier could not countenance why anyone, sane or otherwise, would want to give perfectly functional machines the ability to disregard their programming; it was asking for trouble. After all where would the Empire be if her airships suddenly became conscientious objectors in the middle of an air fight, or the remoras decided on mass to incite a mechanical coup d'état?

Thankfully in most cases the interface had failed to work, Balthier had soon discovered. The technology was too ambitious and too poorly implemented to have any real impact, which was something of a relief. His father's ambition outstripping his means as per usual or so Balthier had initially reported to all those aforementioned keen eyed observers.

Then he had discovered Smith.

Smith had not been in any of the inventories of Cid's creations – in fact no one in Draklor had even known of the Rook's existence. Smith was the prototype – the very first Rook and the first machine Cid had tested the interface mechanism upon. It was ironic therefore that the interface had only worked successfully in Smith and Smith alone. In fact it had worked far more successfully than Cid could have truly countenanced - or at least Balthier hoped that to be the case.

He dearly hoped that Cid had not truly intended to give sentient thought to a machine designed to kill.

The truth was that Smith didn't just function using a facsimile of a hume brain - Smith _thought. _Smith did not just possess the ability to learn, but had a sense of self. Smith had _hidden_ from Balthier because Smith knew Balthier had the power to decommission Smith. Smith knew itself to be alive, and aware, and it had hidden to survive.

Balthier could appreciate the survival imperative – and he could respect it. Still that was but one reason why he had not de-activated the aberrant machine, despite the horrendous trouble it would cause him when Smith's existence inevitably came to light.

'I have a job for you,' Balthier opened his eyes as he addressed the thinking machine, and the first Rook among Rooks buzzed curiously closer. Balthier pulled out of his belt pouch a crumpled piece of paper containing a sketch of the pentacle and sigil design he had scrawled over his blackboard on the seventieth floor.

'Buzz on down to the library on floor fifty and see if you can root out any information pertaining to both, or one, of these designs, would you?'

'Bl-bloop,' it was probably only Balthier's imagination that gave that mechanised utterance the semblance of eagerness, but then again, who could tell? Most likely it was better not to worry about it as Smith went about the process of acquiescing to Balthier's command.

In an instance a small hatch in the front of Smith's shell opened and the feather duster turret retracted momentarily. The hatch shut and there was as whirring sound within Smith's casing before a grabber arm attachment extended from the re-opened hatch to claim the scrap of paper from Balthier's hand. The hand lifted the paper before the glowing sensor eye for a moment before the jointed arm folded in on itself, paper still clutched between the pincer-like hand; paper and arm disappeared inside the hatch and Smith turned to buzz towards the door. A flash from the sensor eye activated the doors unlocking mechanism and the door slid aside.

'Don't let anyone see you,' Balthier called after the robot that was arguably more intelligent that the average hume child, 'and for the gods' own sake stop bloody _dusting_ everything.'

'Blop-blooop,' Smith sounded chastened and Balthier resisted feeling guilty for his tone.

Bemused he watched Smith buzz away along the corridor for a second before the door to room CBD slid closed again.

'Well old man,' Balthier muttered to the stuffy cluttered recesses of room CBD, 'I wonder how long I shall be covering up your mistakes, hm? And when they hang me for it, I wonder if you shall thank me in the next life?'

Smith was arguably the most dangerous thing in Draklor; a machine with independent thought, and a machine that had been designed as a weapon, no less. Yet even after Balthier had realised what he was dealing with he could not bring himself to de-activate the Rook.

Bollocks to it, the thing had been created to kill and had re-programmed itself to dust. Balthier sighed, if only humes could be re-programmed by Smith, no doubt all war would be eradicated from the face of Ivalice in an afternoon. The place would also likely be much less dusty.

Cid had created Smith as surely as he had Balthier, and both Cid's hume son and his thinking weapon had rebelled against their basic design to become something else. To Balthier's ironical and faintly romanticised way of thinking this made he and Smith brothers in spirit if not in flesh. He would keep the damn thing a secret for as long as he could, bugger the cost.

After all when all was said and done, life was life, no matter how it began.

Balthier's hand curled around the half crystal pendant on it's chain around his neck.

'Life might begin with the Wood, but it won't end there. The supplicants have surpassed the tutors and all is chaos for it.'

The words passed his lips unheeded, which was just as well, for Balthier would have been hard pressed to work out what they meant had he listened to them. Closing his eyes he leaned back in the chair, propped his feet up on his father's desk and tried to will himself to sleep.

Painted onto the velvet darkness of his closed eyelids Balthier saw a fallen star; a pentacle with five points striking out into darkness, unbound and without purpose. Just before he descended into the depths of a dreamless slumber he thought he heard a woman weeping.

* * *

**Imperial City Archades:**

Fran stepped out of the aerodrome and into the hum of Rienna's bustling crowds as the sun was still thawing the sky from night to day. She had heard it said that Archades was a city that knew not the nature of sleep, while Fran suspected this not to be the case she could not deny that the city nevertheless contained within the very fabric of its being a beating heart that remained strong come high noon or darkest midnight.

Her feet clicked a staccato beat across the brick stone of Rienna's main thoroughfare as she wove through the early morning Ardents, the street cleaners and the nightwatch departing in search of their day beds.

The noise of the city hummed in her ears; constantly hungry, constantly eager for knowledge and novelty Archades had seemed to her once to be a cold and capriciously avaricious place; soulless and inherently cruel.

'Mornin' Miss Fran,' an old man pushing a refuse barrow before him, his thin frame bent double over his barrow, took time to doff his hat to her as he passed. She nodded to him in turn and watched as the scruffily dressed man bent laboriously at the knees to pick up a moulding pile of discarded rubbish in the gutter. A young man, dressed stylishly in the frock coat of a Tsenoble resident, just stepping out of the aerodrome moved forward swiftly.

'Here old man, let me.' The dandy youth bent down and, shucking his stylish gloves, picked up the filthy refuse and dropped it into the old man's barrow. 'A gent o' your years shouldn't be pickin' up other folks filth.' The young man flashed a crooked smile filled with gold teeth.

The old man grinned, 'One man's filth is another man's treasure, sonny.' He rubbed his back, 'An' the day I be too old t' work be the day I'm in me grave.'

Fran walked on, leaving the up and coming would be gentleman with his bad teeth and the old man with his treasure trove of rubbish to their conversation. Still the exchange stayed in her mind as she left Rienna for the frenetic activity of Trant.

Fran had seen almost all the hume corners of Ivalice had to offer. She had seen grandeur to cower the Galtean elegance of Rabanastre, and she had seen decay so complete it could almost redeem the ruins of Nabudis. She had witnessed countless times the cruelty of humes and their capacity for selflessness and still she did knew not whether the world of humes was more good than bad, or bad than good.

Fran fancied that if she had garnered any knowledge since leaving Golmore these fifty or so years past, it was that there was no good without bad and no bad without good. Nowhere was this truth more in evidence than here in Archades: greatest city of the humes.

A boutique window display stopped Fran in her tracks halfway along the wide avenue in Trant. Almost despite herself she walked forward to stare; behind the glass cushioned upon a purple velvet, gold tasselled, pillow were a pair of two-pronged high-heeled metal boots twined with silver ribbon straps. Fran's ears twitched as she cocked her head to the side and read the words upon the hand written sigh propped up next to the shoes:

_Exclusive to Lucinda's Fashions: a genuine pair of Fran heels. Introductory price 400 Gil. _

Another minute went by before Fran felt able to walk away. Her ears were still twitching. She resisted looking down at her own two-pronged metal heels as her feet clicked over the bricked walkways of this most peculiar of Hume cities. She wondered what would possess a hume to want to wear her footwear, for surely it was merely footwear and that was primarily the same no matter the extraneous design, but then decided that this line of inquiry could only lead to more confusion.

Just before she reached the sky cab Fran once again stopped to peruse the window of another boutique, this one a milliners. There was a hat of deepest crimson in the window, a multi-eyed foot long feather of burnished gold rose elegantly from the hatband. Fran cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes with very Un-Viera speculation.

She did not possess a hat of red with a gold feather in it. She would like to possess a hat of red for she suspected it would compliment well her complexion and colouring. She also knew that Balthier owned a frock coat he never wore in a very similar shade of vermillion red. He would not mind (or more accurately notice) if she were to appropriate this frock coat to compliment the hat she had not yet purchased.

The milliner, a woman of the name Sussana, approached, having just stepped from a sky cab. The keys to her boutique jangled in her hands. Sussana, a plump and contented young woman flush with good health and fortune greeted Fran warmly.

'Good morningtide you, Mistress Fran,' The Milliner's smile became ever so slightly more sly, 'I see you are admiring my newest creation.' Sussana nodded to the window display, 'I am hoping the design will take on.'

'It is a red hat,' Fran said still looking only at the hat.

'Yes,' Sussana agreed, 'The dye was terribly expensive, but I must say it is a very fine hat.' She watched Fran as keenly as a Garuda ready to swoop down and make a kill.

'I do not have a red hat,' Fran said.

'Would you like one?' Sussana asked with the cut-throat bluntness of a business woman scenting an easy sale. 'Won't take but a jiffy to have it cut to accommodate you, Mistress Fran; I'm getting right good at doing that for you.'

Fran's ears twitched, 'I have no need for a red hat.'

'Need and want are two different things,' Sussana pointed out sagely. She had had this conversation with her most unique customer many times and it always ended up in a sale. 'I reckon it don't hurt anyone for you to have a red hat, if you want a red hat.'

Fran considered this; she was fairly new to the concept of vanity, or at least to the concept of her own vanity, but she was a fast learner and Balthier had always stood a good example of how one went about feeding one's vanity.

'I shall purchase the red hat.' She said with confidence.

Sussana beamed at her, 'Marvellous.'

Fran cocked her head to the side and regarded the hat that would be, in short order, hers. 'Perhaps,' she conceded thoughtfully, 'Or perhaps not.'

Vanity was not a Viera trait, Fran thought, as she followed the hume milliner into the store full of very nice hats, so that the skilled Sussana could cut earholes to size into the red hat.

'Would you like to see it in the mirror?' Sussana asked Fran some time later when the hat had been cut to fit. Before Fran could answer Sussana had pulled the full length mirror out of a corner of the shop and suddenly Fran was looking into her own reflection.

For a moment Fran experienced a jarring moment of displacement; she almost did not recognise herself in the long-eared visage before her. Gone was the Wood Warder of many decades passed, gone was the warrior without a cause, dressed in her sheathe of supple black leather. What stood in the place of both those guises was a different creature altogether; a Viera garbed as a hume, in modified velvet tunic and white cotton shirt, the brilliant red hat perched upon her head and a half-tear pendant upon a chain resting against her bosom. The light from the broken half of Lente's Tear caught the light, casting a prismatic flare of rainbows dancing in the smooth surface of the mirror.

What have I become, Fran asked herself silently, as she turned from the mirror image and paid for the red hat with the fine golden feather plume. Am I now hume or am I still Viera?

Fran touched the supple brim of the new hat as she wore it out of the shop. She dropped her hand from the hat to the broken tear drop around her neck. Her thoughts turned back to the note the poor, broken Viera mother had written.

Does Lente weep too for me? Fran wondered as she took a sky cab back to Draklor, or does the Mother curse me for a traitor?


	3. Chapter 3

**Imperial City Archades: Draklor 708 O.V.**

The great siege doors opened with a grind of poorly oiled hydraulics and the interior of Hangar bay nine on Draklor's fifty-third floor stood revealed. Fran stepped into the hangar, her tool belt hanging from her hips and her heels clicking over the grated metal floor.

A small cloud of faces turned towards her at her approach; the assorted student engineers, pilots, and other loiterers greeted her with a shuffling of feet, averted gazes and deferential nods of the head. One or two flicked their eyes up to meet hers and the bravest among them murmured an actual greeting.

'Deputy Director Fran, morning.'

Fran nodded her head in acknowledgement and stopped at the nose of the stripped down Shiva Mk II. She craned her neck to look up at the maw-like grated shield muzzling the nose of the Shiva where Balthier was perched, akin to some hume-like insect. A profusion of sparks fell down around him as he proceeded to either weld or drill something; Fran was not sure which from her vantage point. After a moment he stopped and looked down at her.

'New hat, is it?' He called while blithely dangling from a harness attached to a tensile steel woven rope that a rather nervous first year research assistant operated via winch from a precarious perch on one of the gigantic front fenders. The possibility for disaster was knife edge sharp and, as usual, Balthier could not care less.

Fran put her hand to the brim of the red hat she still wore upon her head. She did not say anything as nothing need be said. Balthier picked up a soldering gun.

'The red suits you; very fetching.' He told her.

Fran did not comment. In truth his compliment and her own vanity embarrassed her somewhat. She looked over the Shiva with a critical eye instead. When she had left for Balfonheim the Shiva had yet to arrive for her annual maintenance. Clearly Balthier had wasted no time in her absence to wreck havoc upon the battleship. Most of the hull plating had been removed and the thick banded rib cage architecture had been exposed to the naked eye. Gun placements and cannon turrets had been torn free leaving empty sockets like black blind eyes all over the hull. Wires and Glossair conduits stretched over the bare bones of the ship like arteries run dry of life blood.

Fran quirked a brow, 'You have been busy in my absence.' She murmured too low for him to hear. She wondered what trouble her hume partner invited with this rape of the Shiva. She wondered what he thought he was doing going to such lengths.

Gripping hold of a dangling winch line, Fran hook one foot onto a convenient piece of metal fret-work left still in-situ and began to clamber up the side of the ship. There were a number of gasps and such from the gathered group of students as she free-climbed up the outer shell of the massive vessel.

'Show off,' Balthier caught her arm as she ascended to the lip of metal just below his welding perch and helped to pull her up alongside him.

'You are only going to encourage the daft little fools down there to break their necks trying to climb up after you.'

Balthier pointed out without any discernable concern. Thick safety goggles covered his eyes and a smear of glossair oil adorned his right cheekbone like the mark of an ancient war tribe, his hair was disordered from the constant run of his fidgeting hands. Balthier did not look much like the dandy pirate on this day but he looked every inch the mechanical engineer.

'Think it unlikely I do, that the pride of Akademy would be so foolhardy.'

Fran found more secure purchase upon the lip of metal and took the welding flame from his hands.

Balthier scoffed a laugh, 'Book smart and life daft, the lot of them. You are also forgetting that I too am an alumnus of akademy, and we both know I haven't the sense I was born with.'

Fran almost smiled, there was no cause to agree with this statement of cast iron truth and Balthier did not look as if he needed or desired her to gift him with gentle lie. They both knew he was reckless to a fault when it came to his own personal safety.

'What do you do here?'

Now that sparks no longer flew Fran could see the strange vaguely concave and obsidian shining platelet Balthier had welded into place upon the nose cone of the Shiva.

'This is a sunstone from the Nomad village of Giza.' She turned to look at him. 'The Magistry of law agreed your request then?' She asked though she suspected she already knew the answer.

Balthier lifted the goggles from his eyes, managing to smear more oil from his hands onto the tip of his nose as he did so. His dark eyes flashed with secret delight and mischief.

'Of course Fran,' he lied with cheerful ease. 'You know how well I see eye to eye with Zargabaath and Gabranth; birds of a feather, the three of us.' He could not quite keep a smile from breaking free at this blatant fallacy.

'I see,' Fran reached out for another of the sunstone plates left stacked up in a wedge between some of the grate work of the nose cone's defensive grill. She tapped her fingers on the dark surface that could literally leech and absorb the very power of the sun within its dark depths. She decided to ignore for now Balthier's rashness in defying the edicts of the magistry; it would do no good to chide.

'I had wondered if you would manage to convince the Nomad's to trade such a vast number of their sunstones. They are a people not desirous of material goods; I had thought you had little to trade.'

Balthier snorted as he rooted in his extra large belt pouches for some manner of tool. 'If I was a man given to bruised feelings I might think you meant some veiled insult there.' He said distractedly as he found the small screw driver he had been seeking. 'I always have something to trade.'

'Be that as may be,' Fran rejoined, 'But wonder I still do if what you have to trade is of any value to those who have something to sell.'

Balthier stopped what he was doing to glance at her mildly surprised by her sharpness. He juggled the tools from one hand to the other so he could scratch at his hair line. Close cropped tawny hair was further ruffled askew.

'All not well in port, hm?' He asked with feigned casualness, immediately hitting the root of the problem. Fran did not immediately respond.

Balthier began unscrewing a section of shield plating from the hull underneath the protective grill. He handed off the plating to Fran once he had removed it and immediately dug his fingers into the serpent nest of wiring revealed therein. He did not press her for response.

'A tragedy small but complete,' Fran said simply, 'Once done could not be undone. There was no reason to linger thereafter.'

Balthier paused to glance at her, his fingers stopping their skilled motion, 'As bad as that, was it?'

Fran rolled one shoulder in graceful half shrug setting aside the plating and holding out a hand ready to receive the first dislodged circuit board Balthier handed to her a moment later. She frowned curiously.

'You over reach yourself; this goes beyond the requested repairs.'

Balthier smirked, 'And you sound surprised,' he retorted with bluff cheer noting but deftly ignoring her evasion of the issue. 'Really Fran if their vaulted magisters Zargabaath and Gabranth did not expect me to overreach my remit they would not have given me Draklor in the first place.'

'True,' Fran murmured, 'one might think they set you up for a fall.'

'They are in for a long wait then,' Balthier thrust his arm, up to the elbow into the cavity he had made in the delicate inner thatch-work of the massive nose of the Shiva. Cheek pressed against the grill and his arm at full extension Balthier closed his eyes so that he was not distracted by extraneous activity.

Fran remained quiet watching the minute changes in his expression; the stillness which came with deep concentration that passed over Balthier's face. It always impressed Fran to watch Balthier work, for he worked so rarely at anything at all.

'Hand me a sunstone, would you?' He asked tone distracted and reached out with his free hand.

Fran placed one of the sun platelets into his waiting hand. Balthier opened his eyes, withdrew his other hand, leaned back while allowing the harness to keep him from falling and examined the back of the platelet. He pondered the sunstone for a moment in silence.

'Soldering gun, if you would so kind?'

Fran handed him the soldering gun and before he asked she then handed him the circuit board.

'If this should fail you are like to blow us all to pieces,' Fran pointed out dryly.

Balthier's lips twitched in a smirk. 'There are always sacrifices in the pursuit of science Fran,' his dark eyes gleamed, 'and it won't be you or I who are blown to buggery, if anything should go awry. I assure you we shall be well away from the Shiva when she takes flight from here.'

Fran gave him a droll look, 'You are like to be hanged.'

Balthier pulled the goggles down over his eyes again and readied the gun, 'Be that as it may, I'm as like to be right as wrong.'

Fran sighed and left him to it as Balthier began soldering the circuit board to the back of the sun stone and began her climb back down to the solid floor of the hangar. She would not pretend to truly comprehend what it was Balthier attempted here. That was not to say she did not understand what he hoped to achieve, only that her understanding of aviation, energy conversion, and the finer points of engineering amounted to less than his.

Fran could repair almost anything that possessed wings, but she could not create wings from naught but wild fancy. It was not in her nature to see the potential for everything in nothing at all. Balthier, in contrast, did just that every moment he breathed in and out.

Descending back down from the Shiva it was but a second after both her feet were firmly on the ground again that she was swarmed by the loitering students.

'Deputy Director Fran - can we assist?'

Fran regarded the small ring of dove-grey tunic wearing Draklor underlings with tired patience. There were so many of them and Balthier was so skilled in the art of ignoring the existence of the students that it fell to Fran to find use for them. Fran glanced up at the Shiva and then down to the ring of hopeful faces.

'Know you where the shield casing and munitions have been removed to?' She asked any one, or all, of the hopeful students. A dozen heads nodded eagerly.

'Lockup seventeen Deputy Director,' one young hume male, an Elite cadet who had won military scholarship to attend Draklor in exchange for military service, saluted her with regimental precision.

Fran cocked her head to the side, both amused and bemused by the sign of deference. When cadets saluted Balthier he tended to clip them around the ear and warn them that if they did that again he would personally fling them off the seventieth floor balcony. Fran decided that such rebuke was not necessary, or called for, and so refrained from noticing the gesture at all.

'And know you if inventory and assessment of said munitions has been undertaken?' she queried.

'I do not believe so, Deputy Director,' the cadet rapped out with in-grained military succinctness. Fran suspected he was new, as Balthier had yet to throw the youth off any form of balcony.

She regarded the group of humes, some younger even than Penelo and Vaan, with mildness. 'Had you not best be about the task then?'

'Right away, Deputy Director; it will be done forthwith.' The boy-hume saluted, clicked his heels, and in a general stampede, he and the other students dashed off with more enthusiasm than common sense. Fran's ears twitched as she watched them depart. They were all so very, very young.

A moment later the whir of a winch and the thump of feet landing on solid grated metal floor denoted Balthier's approach. 'You got rid of the little blighters, hm?' Balthier detached himself from the harness and stepped out of it. 'You have a gift with children, evidently.'

Fran gave him a sour look, which for her was tantamount to an emotional outburst. 'You know not of what you speak.' She told him almost coldly.

Balthier blinked at her, pulling his goggles off his head completely. 'You are upset.' He said sounding more surprised by the concept than stung by her tone. His brown eyes fixed on her intently. 'There is more to this Balfonheim matter, isn't there? I am beginning to think the tragedy you spoke of was not so little, nor is the business done.'

Fran met his eyes but did not speak. Balthier frowned.

'Fran?' He pressed when her silence maintained.

'I am unsettled.' She admitted finally.

Balthier watched her with keen eyes for a long moment. She wondered what he saw in her regard and what it told him of her true feelings.

'Hmm,' he said after an appreciable pause and then, sensing that Fran did not want to divulge the reason for her unease, he clapped his hands together as if to dispel the tension of the moment and affixed a bright smirk to his face.

'Then I have just the tonic, for you.' His smirk widened. 'I am beginning to suspect the senate means to assassinate me.'

Fran was grateful for Balthier's tact and discretion. She arched her brows in encouragement, 'Senator Etteran has visited you again?'

'Like the proverbial plague of misfortune,' Balthier agreed cheerfully. 'To be frank the woman scares me.'

Fran shifted her weight and reached out a hand to wipe away the smear of grease daubing Balthier's right cheek, 'What does she want I wonder?'

Balthier pulled away from her touch and freed his handkerchief from somewhere on his person. He scrubbed at his face, frowning when he noticed the grease that now smeared the snowy white cloth.

'To bleed me and feed my innards to her unholy young, I suspect.' He said dismissively. 'I wouldn't mind except that I'm bloody sure I am actually innocent of all wrongdoing that she has thus far alluded to, or even the _intent_ to do wrong.'

Fran nodded, 'An unusual occurrence for one such as you; to stand accused but innocent rather than being guilty but not accused.'

'Your steadfast support and commendation of my good character is noted and treasured, my dear Fran.' Balthier gave her a droll, somewhat arch, look. 'Still you will be saddened when the vicious old harpy eats me.' A smile slipped free and his eyes danced.

Fran shifted her weight from one foot to another, the tension leaving her body as Balthier's adept distraction performed its purpose.

'Perhaps,' she conceded offering a smile in her eyes.

Balthier turned back to look up at the Shiva. 'I think I am on to something Fran. I think this experiment will work.'

'You still risk severe censure should your duplicity be discovered.' She pointed out. 'You go against the express commands of Senate and Judiciary both.'

Balthier let his eyes ghost over the Shiva thoughtfully. 'I know.' He said seriously. 'But if I do nothing…….' He stopped and shook his head.

'Then the humes will one day lose their wings.' Fran nodded. 'The Magicite is all but spent and without the ore no airship can fly.'

Fran let her own eyes study Balthier as he studied the Shiva. 'Wars have been won and lost over magicite. Your father gave his mind and his life to find a new source of hume power; worry I do that you will follow.'

'I don't seek power; I don't seek glory; I most certainly do not seek to replicate the old man's mistakes.'

Fran cocked her head to the side, 'Yet all three are consequence of your actions. You cannot hide from what you do, Balthier. What you seek will have consequences untold.'

'Damned if I do and damned if I don't Fran,' Balthier shrugged easily. 'I ask questions of life because I am hume. It is why I was born.'

Fran looked at him sharply, 'Why say you this?'

Balthier glanced at her mildly and shrugged again. 'Because it is true.' He answered her and for just a moment, a sliver of time, Fran felt the cold touch of fate dance down her spine. Balthier's words spoke the echo of far older truth, truth lost to most of the ways of Ivalice.

Oblivious to Fran's unease Balthier yawned and stretched his arms over his head, flexing his spine and wriggling his fingers.

'Now,' he said brushing his fingers over the green satin of his vest coat, 'I have governmental edicts to disregard and duplicitous acts of experimental engineering to engage in.' He looked at her curiously. 'Care to help?'

Fran sighed but shook her head, 'I will return presently.'

Balthier smirked, 'Hm, you are clearly well acclimated to management Fran, when there is work to be done you are sure to be elsewhere.'

'It is the explosions I avoid,' she replied archly, 'as any with sense would choose to do.'

Fran turned on her heels and started out of the hangar to the sound of Balthier's laughter. She had much to think on. Balthier and his games with sun and stone would have to wait. In truth he did not need her help and would like as not only be hindered by her presence.

Opening up the piece of paper she had taken from Fantl's room Fran once more considered the words. It felt to her as if the hands of fate yet again had begun to weave traps for she and Balthier both. His words to her chimed in her mind like the heavy tolling of a great warning bell.

_I ask questions of life because I am hume. It is why I was born. _

Fran knew not why these innocent words should send a shiver down her spine, but they did. The words had weight, power, meaning beyond her ken. They invoked a memory of something that had been lost to her. A memory of the forgotten; these words had been spoken once before, Fran sensed, in times long past and gone.

'In the days of the Mother, the humes on bended knee did come, supplicants one and all, to have their eternal question answered.'

Fran murmured the words of the ancient story of her people to herself, pulling them from the deep roots of forgotten memory in her mind.

'Lente,' Fran whispered, stopping the white and red and sterile halls of Draklor. Her blood ran cold and then hot. Her ears twitched with a powerful sense of forces in motion both ancient and new. 'Lente the Mother; once the answer and now lost to time's endless march.'

Or was this hubris to think so? Once more Fran looked down at Fantl's last words etched in tears upon the paper in her hands.

Lente invoked and a Viera mother dead. This was omen without question but Fran did not know what it portended. The death of a Viera and unborn child, especially in these times, the twilight of her people, could not go ignored. Fantl's story must not go untold. If fate had conspired to set Fran upon this path then walk it she would.

Fran, though not of the humes, must ask her own questions. That she feared the answers she might find was not reason enough to hold her tongue.

She must leave at once.

* * *

**Archades - Grand Arcade:**

A desire for sustenance finally drove Balthier out of the confines of Draklor tower as the sun passed its zenith and plummeted towards the darkening horizon. He had a throbbing headache and a dry throat but this was as like as not due to the fact that he had managed to snatch only about three hours sleep the night before and he couldn't actually remember the last meal he had eaten. There were just so many more interesting things to do with his time than sleep and eat, after all.

Still Balthier believed it was good practice to venture forth from Draklor at least once a day; a man could start to go peculiar if he stayed shut up in the tower for too long, after all. There were plenty of people who already considered Balther to be verging towards extremes in eccentricity already and, it could be argued, madness was only a hop, skip, and imaginary friend away from there.

He ate a cockatrice pie in an over-priced eatery in Grand Arcade to silence the roaring ache in his innards. He enjoyed a mug of ale and dared to read the daily newspaper while he ate. Apparently there had been a number of unfortunate incidences wherein well-to-do young ladies wearing very high heels had fallen in the streets and turned an ankle. There was a picture of the hazardous footwear carefully illustrated upon the front page. Balthier frowned; the footwear looked very similar to the frankly lethal two-pronged boots favoured by Fran.

How very odd.

He finished his meal without incident or interruption, left a generous tip for the waitress (and the newspaper) and left to make a slow return to Draklor. He paused to watch the sun go down, leaning against the vine choked wall of Skyfield Gardens. He watched the sky cabs below zipping in and out of the high buildings and zipping through the skyways of lower Archades.

It was the sun that held his attention however; an orangey orb dipping below the sharp, blocky spires of the city Imperial, the sun seemed a trifling thing, small, bloody, sinking fast. Balthier frowned into the dying light. How much raw power much be contained within that celestial vessel that it could make the crops grow and heat the deserts of Dalmasca, the vast arable plains of Rozzaria, the hills of Landis and the steppes of Archadia all at once for hours on end. Surely the sun was a source of energy far and away superior to any lump of ore or Mist stone ferreted out of the dank ground?

From his pocket Balthier withdrew a shard of sun stone; the smooth faintly concave surface was an inky black and the glassy texture was slightly warm under the thoughtful run of his fingers as he tilted the flat shard up to the light. The sun belonged to no one. It was a free source of energy. It was potentially limitless. Balthier could not understand why it was that no one, from here to science pavilion of Rozzaria, had ever bothered to ask the question: are Glossair and stones the only way to fly?

'There was something before the stones,' Balthier flipped the shard between his hands. 'There will be something after them too.'

He tucked the shard away again and it was warm in his pocket. He made his way back to Draklor, estimating that he had perhaps a few hours more work left in him before simple fatigue forced him into inefficient unconsciousness.

* * *

**Draklor Hangar Bay Nine: **

Balthier knew there was something wrong as soon as he reached the huge metal doors of the hangar. The hairs at the nape of his neck stood up on end and suddenly his over-worked state of perpetual exhaustion rolled off his shoulders like water from a water fowl's back. There was an intruder in the hangar; someone had countermanded the security measures and done so in a less than professional manner, leaving evidence an experienced burglar like Balthier could easily detect.

Balthier backed away from the hangar doors, reaching up under his vest coat for the sheathed dagger hidden under the satin covered leather. Security was always light along the corridors of Draklor now (Balthier had an aversion to having armed soldiers in Draklor - they might interfere with his illicit activities). For the first time since he had taken tenure Balthier almost wished for a squad of hoplites and under judges to come clanking along. Bugger it he'd make do with a mastiff if it came to it.

Slipping into one of the bulkhead control rooms it became apparent that, although not the most subtle of intruders whomsoever had broken into Draklor was at least experienced in the mechanisms of Draklor's security. The trespasser had disabled the bulkhead mechanism completely. Balthier could not unlock the locked blue bulkheads, nor lock the red bulkheads. He frowned. It would be relatively easy to fix the jam, but it might be better to discover why the jam had been instituted in the first place.

The Shiva was safe; the security around the airship was a separate system infinitely more complex than the bulkhead override. It was a separate system to controls for the hangar bay launch doors as well, plus the Shiva's engine was in small pieces stored in numerous storage chambers distributed amid at least three floors of the tower, all shut up tight behind warded doors. Any thief trying to make off with the Shiva would not just have to overcome these inconveniences (and Balthier knew from experience that inconvenience and complications to a plan were far more detrimental to a smooth running heist than any security force) but also reassemble her flight drive and main engine block before take-off.

Ergo, Balthier reasoned as he left the bulkhead control room, the potential thief was either profoundly stupid, or, more likely, his object was something other than the Shiva.

'What are you after?' He murmured out loud as he realised that the bulkheads that had been left open created a neat little path for Balthier to follow; a path laid out by the intruder and thus a trap in the making.

'Hm, you may have caught the rat in the trap, but can you make me run it?' Balthier paused to consider his options.

There were not all that many he soon discovered. Walk the trap or stay put seemed to be the only viable choices now open to him, as Balthier was effectively cut off from any of the populated floors of the tower. It also seemed to him highly likely that if he was to backtrack to the entrance he had used to return to Draklor minutes earlier he would find the door locked or at least discover his exit sealed in some manner. It was simple common sense to assume such. There was little choice but to take the risk of plunging forward.

(Also he was technically responsible for the security of Draklor's hangar bays and all equipment and personnel therein. It was also, more importantly, an affront to his personal dignity to suffer a thief to thrive in _his _Draklor.)

Balthier sighed. 'Well this is a fine to-do.' He rolled his shoulders, pulled the dagger free of its sheath and walked straight into the trap the considerate intruder had laid for him.

At that moment in time standing in the cold corridor of Draklor, blindly strolling straight into an obvious trap had seemed like the most expedient way to get this nonsense over and done with swiftly so he could get on with the business of bending the power of the sun to his will. He had survived any number of traps and ambushes before, often capably turning the tide on his would-be aggressors. It therefore, to Balthier's idiosyncratic way of thinking, seemed sound strategy to advance.

(Balthier would be the first to admit, after some inducement, that he could be short-sighted when it came to fully considering consequence and risk. Then again no one was perfect and what he lacked in caution he more than made up for in charm - or so he claimed).

Five minutes later, when the rat had run the maze, this sound strategy came to appear considerably less well thought out than it had back at the control room doors.

'Well this won't do.'

Balthier let out a deep breath upon discovering the massive explosive device rigged up to one of the main power generators of the tower. In light of these developments Balthier swiftly revised his previous priorities and decided that he had rather more immediate concerns to contend with than the Shiva reconditioning. Survival being first among these new concerns.

'Not good; not good at all.'

There was a timer on the bomb. It ticked down the seconds amounting to just over a minute until detonation, and by the looks of the bomb when it blew it would take out most of Draklor and a fair chunk of Grand Arcade with it. Balthier closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

'Why does this sort of thing only happen to me?' He asked no one in particular in rather plaintive tones.

He didn't expect an answer, so the sudden appearance of a silvered scimitar under his chin came as something of a shock. A perfectly empty male voice, slightly muffled in sound, issued from somewhere just behind Balthier's left shoulder.

'Ffamran Mid Bunansa, by order of the Knights Kiltia it has been decreed that you should die. Yet Faram is merciful and thus I shall grant you this one chance to repent.'

The scimitar disappeared from under his chin as swiftly as it had appeared. Sucking in a quick breath of air Balthier suspected that the next minute before imminent fiery oblivion was going to be a long one.

Things had just become very, very complicated.


	4. Chapter 4

**Archades - Draklor Laboratory: 708 O.V.**

The explosive device rigged up (in somewhat amateurish fashion) to one of the major arteries of power flowing through the Draklor Tower continued to tick down inexorably towards detonation. There was also a large, wickedly curved blade hovering dangerously close to Balthier's ear. A bead of sweat prickled against his hairline. He wondered precisely when, and how, a perfectly ordinary day at the lab had become so tediously perilous.

Anyone would think he was still pirating if this malarkey kept up.

'Ffamran Mid Bunansa, by order of the Knights Kiltia it has been decreed that you should die. Yet Faram is merciful and thus I shall grant you this one chance to repent.'

The former aristocrat turned sky pirate, turned wage-slave aeronautic engineer, otherwise known by the comfortable alias of Balthier was in no hurry to turn around and face the man who had just uttered such dire words of warning, but he did face him all the same.

'Repent what, precisely?'

Before him, with his back to the only escape route, stood a large man, dangerously built with the stance and obviously well developed musculature of a seasoned warrior. The man was swathed in dark blue robes, in the hue and colour of the Kiltia; the robes can replete with a cowl covering the stranger's head and face. Impressively chunky gauntlets rode up the man's forearms as he held the silver gilt scimitar down at his side.

'Repent your heretical ways and beg forgiveness.' The man told him unhelpfully. His voice was muffled by the thick woollen mask he wore over his chin and lower face.

'Who are you?' Balthier asked careful to stand still and keep his hands where the other man could see them. The timer on the explosive device continued to tick; each click and beat reverberating in Balthier's brain. He really did not have time for this.

The large man shook his head grip tightening on the hilt of his scimitar. 'That is not for you to know, heretic.'

Balthier blinked. Hmm, so this was going to be one of _those_ encounters, was it? Well Balthier could deal with that. His life had given him ample experience in dealing with the deranged, peculiar, and homicidally inclined.

'I see.' He said carefully, calculating possibilities and the time slowly ticking away by the seconds. 'Well then, do you mind terribly if I diffuse this bomb?'

Balthier half turned towards the device. In his experience people who have the opportunity to kill you but instead engage in name calling instead of slaughter are not altogether that committed towards the act of murder as they may declare. (When Balthier wanted to kill someone he got on and did it, he didn't discuss the matter with the intended victim beforehand, which incidentally, might explain why everyone he had ever tried to kill was now in fact dead.)

Therefore, extending the previously expounded logic to the present circumstances, Balthier deemed the bomb the more immediate threat to life and limb, as the maniac with the cowl and cape clearly lacked sufficient motivation for murder.

'No you must not interfere with this act of Faram's right justice' The cloaked man shifted his stance and raised the scimitar, 'You must be stopped; Draklor must be expunged from the face of Ivalice.'

'Why?' Balthier half turned and asked the question over his shoulder genuinely perplexed. 'Why destroy the laboratory?'

Balthier knew perhaps better than most that within the white and red and blue pulsing corridors of the laboratory all manner of horrors of war had been devised, perfected, built, and unleashed, over the years, but that was the fault of the men and women who made those weapons, not the building. Balthier, who had helped "expunge" his own father from the face of Ivalice, could not make the cognitive leap that made it permissible to blow up a building filled with people simply because corrupt people had perpetrated heinous acts within in years past. It did not make sense.

'You must be stopped,' the man repeated as if this was an answer. It became readily apparently that this man's mind was nowhere near as sharp as his blade. 'You are cut from the same cloth as those who once threatened the balances of Ivalice. It has been decreed that you die. Thus you must die. I see now that repentance is beyond you.'

The scimitar brushed against the side of Balthier's neck, pressing against the lobe of his right ear and Balthier immediately stilled; he hadn't seen the sword move, the action had been that fast. Still he had met too many brutes skilled in the art of murder to be intimated by a moron with a sharp pointy object. He scowled at the man contemptuously.

'And I suppose the three hundred completely innocent Nabradians ten floors below are an acceptable sacrifice in your bid to blow up my building, hmm?' He demanded mockingly. 'Or are those poor misshapen buggers heretics as well?'

The scimitar quivered as the hand holding it against his throat twitched, 'You lie; you seek to confuse me.' The man said.

'Hardly,' Balthier scoffed, 'I prefer a challenge after all.'

He looked at he man, whose face was completely hidden by the cowl and the strange woollen knitted face mask that revealed only his dark eyes. 'For goodness sake man, surely you know Draklor is a hospital now? Or does your god enjoy bollocking about with those of Nabudis, hmm; the Midnight Shard not enough smiting for Faram's tastes, that it?'

Something hard and cold built up like a wall behind the man's brown eyes. Balthier suspected that he had just over-played his hand. The edge of the scimitar pressed against Balthier's throat with enough force that he had to angle his head so the blade did not pierce his skin and open his throat.

'I shall not permit you to use others to justify your own salvation.' The man said through his mask-full of wool. 'I know your story, heretic. You have earned your damnation and I am prepared to die for my calling if it means you too shall die.'

'Oh good for you,' Balthier jeered turning to face front again, with the fanatic and his sword behind him, 'I am sure the Nabradians shall all die happy knowing you are morally at peace with your decision to murder us all for no good reason. In fact….'

Balthier moved fast as a whip-crack before he had even finished speaking. He pivoted on one heel while arching up and back, he crooked the elbow of his right arm, jerking it backwards into the chin of the man threatening him. The man was taken by surprise. He staggered back with a grunt of pain. Balthier made a grab for the man's sword arm with his left hand, before the other man could stagger to far away, and calling on all his bar brawl know-how, threw the man over his shoulder to crash to the floor right beside the bomb. The scimitar clattered to the cold shiny floor of Draklor and Balthier kicked it out of the way.

'Faram curse you…..' The man gasped, winded, but he swiftly tried to get to his feet.

Balthier grabbed him by the thick folds of his luxurious robes, jerked the bigger man off balance while he was still disorientated from the throw, and smashed his fist into the man's woollen mask covered face. There was a muffled crunch as the man's nose popped like a balloon. Balthier tossed him aside with a growl of contempt, shook his split knuckled and stinging fist out and dropped to his knees before the bomb all in one fluid movement.

He had thirty seconds; just thirty seconds before detonation. They were all buggered – completely and totally buggered all to buggery.

'Fire magicite standard incendiary design,' he recited to himself absently as his eyes took in the details of the bomb's construction and his mind began the process of dismantling the weapon that his hands were soon following. 'Failsafe in situ; detonation will cause a massive power flux through the primary gloss feed, thus in turn creating a chain reaction throughout the tower, and thus we are all blown to smithereens…'

Words falling like a mantra in place of useless panic in the interval of scant seconds between life and fiery death Balthier's fingers moved faster even than his thoughts. He tore out wires and cables, ignoring the stinging jolts of shock that flared through the nerves and muscles of his hand as sparks flew. There was no time even to sort through his tools in his belt pouch. He would just have to do this the messy way.

'Damn it all to hell and back,' he muttered as time slipped away. Smashing the glass casement holding the fire magicite with his elbow Balthier shoved his hand through the jagged maw of shattered glass and physically tore the solid lump of fire magicite out of the heart of the bomb.

'Son of a….' Pain ignited through his right hand as the fire magicite primed to fire up if it was tampered with, flared into white heat. The pain was so sudden and so intense that it momentarily robbed Balthier of breath, sight, and all other awareness of external stimuli.

It was just bloody typical that it was at this moment that the stupid beggar with the broken nose and the sleeve dagger chose to re-enter the fray.

'Heretic!' The man roared and slammed into Balthier knocking the wind out of him and jerking him off his feet. 'You will die and be judged beyond the veil.'

In full charge the bigger man drove Balthier into the wall of the corridor. Balthier saw stars and the stars were on fire; they pin-wheeled before his eyes as pain jack-knifed through his body. The flurry of blows that subsequently rained down on Balthier from his attacker's fists bounced off painlessly, solely because Balthier was too stunned to feel them. His knees gave way and he slid down the wall of the corridor beside the now deactivated bomb.

The vague thought that somehow this was all very unfair, that surely stopping the detonation should have been the end of it, flared dully in Balthier's pained mind before being bludgeoned into the general confusion of pain as the cloaked man continued to deliver his rather thorough beating.

'I must fulfil my duty……..you must die.'

It was at this point in the general pummelling that Balthier managed to get his wits about him, or perhaps his well-honed survival instinct merely gained dominance over the screaming pain, and Balthier started to block the blows. He did not much care for the notion that he had to die so that this dim-witted thug could give himself a pat on the back for a job well done; such a death was a trifle demeaning.

'I….don't bloody think so…….sunshine.'

Pride thus reawakened Balthier began to fight back; dazed and blind with pain Balthier threw himself forward towards the man, managing to knock him backwards and send them both sprawling across the floor.

'Try and blow up my lab, will you?'

All dignity was swiftly lost as the two men tussled like children in a schoolyard brawl, assuming the average schoolyard brawl involved knives, that is.

The robed man had a considerable weight advantage over Balthier and was likely the more experienced combatant but Balthier was a living, breathing, compendium of dirty tricks and nasty ploys. He went for the man's eyes with pointed fingers and the man's groin with his knee. Had the man's cowl not seemingly been welded to his head Balthier would have started hair pulling to boot; bugger it if he had to he'd bite the bastard's bloody nose off.

At some point in the general melee an audience had gathered, perhaps alerted by the fact that the bulkhead doors had been tampered with, perhaps alerted by the sounds of a struggle. It was difficult to tell. Either way within short order there was a gaggle of stunned student interns standing at the end of the corridor watching the director of aviation and engineering roll around on the cold floor of the corridor wrestling with a strange man in bright blue robes.

No one could say working for Director Bunansa was ever dull.

'I'll show you repentance you sodding…' Balthier managed, through virtue of sheer bloody-minded dishonourable conduct, to gain the upper hand. He slammed the robed man down onto the hard smooth corridor floor, leapt to his feet, swayed violently, corrected his balanced, and savagely stamped his right foot down on the other man's windpipe. The man's legs kicked against the floor as he went into a spasm of agony and then passed out.

Balthier sneered down at the cloaked man with cold triumph before spitting out a gout of blood from his mouth.

'Thought you could come here and kill me, did you?'

Wrenching the dagger he had been unable to use in the fight simply through lack of a clear angle free of the sheathe Balthier dropped down into a crouch beside the body. His arm, holding the knife, rose and then plunged downward in a blindingly swift arc.

'Go to Faram you bastard.'

* * *

**Somewhere Else:**

Ivalice wept and so too did Lente; the ice of the Mother's pain filled her veins. Her ears rang with the screams of centuries and upon her tongue the acid cold bite of her children all but choked her.

Lente's sorrow was great enough to swallow kingdoms whole; she shed tears enough to wash away deserts and erode mountains. The blizzard gales howled her rage.

'Raithwall,' she screamed and her pain made the ice shelves tremble against her wrath. 'Raithwall, traitor, deceiver; you who have made this of me, you who betrayed me – all I do now upon your conscience rests.'

Lente stood amid the frozen wastes of Kerwon, under the shadow of the Named One's sullied retreat. She knew what it was that she must do. Ivalice's balance was askew and the old ways had been lost, just as the true Word had been lost to ears grown deaf to their own lies.

To the Guardians she must now take her plight and the Old Ones, those great and terrible keepers of precepts long forgotten and lore discarded, would then rise once more and wipe from Ivalice's vast bounty the stain of Raithwall's corruption.

Through her frozen tears Lente smiled. The ways were lost and confused; all paths led only in decreasing circles of chaos and confusion. The humes ran rampant and her children, the Viera, dwindled and faded, victims of their own apathy.

Lente knew that it was too late to return to her children, too late to teach the Word that had been forgotten, too late to reach out to the humes. It was too late for humes and Viera both.

The Mother wailed and Lente trudged forward and onwards towards the first of the Great Seals. There was to be no salvation; no remedy for the great ills Raithwall had wrought upon this land.

There was nothing left for Lente but to purge Ivalice of all that was corrupt and wrong. It was time to wrest back the hands of time and awaken the Guardians in fire and blood and tears.

* * *

**Draklor: **

The gathered students gasped with one voice; there were, without question, any number of strange and possibly not entirely legal things going on in Draklor at any one time, especially in Director Bunansa's department, but not even the most outlandish of students had expected to witness a murder in progress. Time stood still in the fraction of a second between the potential for disaster and disaster itself.

Then salvation arrived into the moment of dawning disaster wearing twin pronged steel heeled boots.

'Balthier!'

Fran's voice cut through the frozen second like the proverbial sharp object and Balthier jolted in surprise. His aim was thrown off and the tip of the dagger sparked off the smooth stone slabs of the corridor flooring, missing the unconscious man completely. Balthier swore coarsely as his wrist was wrenched back as his momentum clashed with the determined and un-giving solidity of the floor; the dagger jerked out of his grip.

'Bloody hell woman,' he snarled furiously, 'You could have given me heart failure.' Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth from a cut to his inner cheek and a viciously swelling bottom lip; there were also bruises blossoming across most visible flesh on his person.

'Better that than the hangman's noose.' Fran moved swiftly forward, dropping down beside her lividly angry and panting partner. Adrenaline, shock and pain created a stinging corona of confused scents around Balthier. She could feel his hackles beginning to drop as she reached out to check the pulse of the sprawled form of the cloaked man.

'Who is this?' She asked glancing at the ruined bomb still attached to the wall, 'And what has happened here?'

Balthier was playing with his fat lip and he gave her a look that could best be described as churlish. It was doubtful he was even aware of the group of slack-jawed potential witnesses that had almost, _almost,_ been privy to an act of thoughtlessness that even Balthier's silver tongue could not save him from. Had he killed the man on the floor in front of some of Archades most privileged youth he most assuredly would have hanged for it; Fran was almost cold just thinking on it.

'Went out for supper,' Balthier began his recitation of recent events with cold precision, 'Came back, found the bomb, found the intruder. The man threatened me; I acted in self-defence and broke the bastard's nose. Went about disarming the bomb, the blighter didn't like that…….and you know the rest.' He flapped a hand dismissively. 'You know how it goes.'

Fran frowned, she could almost hear the thundering heartbeats of the gaggle of students straining their senses to hear every word of the exchange and watching Balthier bleed with avaricious fascination.

'Know you this man?' She asked Balthier in a voice so low that only he could hear.

'Of course not,' Balthier was not really paying attention. Instead he was examining the wash of blood covering his torn vest and trousers. 'Bloke said something about the Kiltia, but I'll be buggered if I know what I could have done to upset that lot.' He muttered distractedly, slipping into the somewhat uncouth dialect of Balfonheim, which was odd as Balthier rarely allowed such low born speech to trip from his aristocratic tongue.

Fran's nose twitched. She could smell something unnatural and astringent rising from Balthier's body. She sampled the air, redolent with the metallic tint of blood, upon her tongue. Alarm coursed through her being as she recognised the strange scent.

'Bollocks to buggery.' Balthier exploded, pulling at the blood sodden satin covered leather vest coat that had been cut through. Crimson soaked linen clung to the puckered mouth of a knife slash arching all the way down the length of his rib cage on the left side to open his stomach. 'This is a _new_ shirt.'

Balthier turned a venomous glower onto the unconscious intruder. 'That's it - the bastard will pay for this. Two hundred and fifty Gil for genuine Rozzarian cotton – this is beyond the pall.' He tried to rise to his feet and Fran pulled him back down, against her body. The poison she could smell coursing through his body had clearly addled his wits; she could see it in the dull gleam of his eyes.

'Be still,' she whispered in his ear as she propped him up against the wall and began to examine his stomach wound.

The gathered group of students, observing the liquid wash of scarlet blood pouring forth from the sliced mouth of leather and satin covering Balthier's torso could only gape in wonderment as, from Balthier's lips, a torrent of expletives and complaints regarding offenses against fine tailoring by bloody bastard religious fanatics in sodding daft headgear ushered forth.

In the supreme ignorance of privileged youth, the students decided that only a real hard nut, dyed in the wool scrapper, would be so completely indifferent to his own precarious situation as to ignore the fact that his innards were about to become outards and his blood was now coating the Draklor halls. Clearly Director Bunansa was one such stalwart lunatic and thusly worthy of the highest accords of awe and prestige; the students were enthralled and enraptured.

Fran sighed and took control of the situation realising that if she didn't act Balthier was very likely to bleed to death while still cursing the unconscious man for ruining his apparel. She suspected that some compound of the poison also acted as a pain numbing agent, so that Balthier had yet to countenance just how badly hurt he was. Her eyes scanned the gathered hume children.

'You,' she pointed to a girl of around Penelo's age, 'You are called Tibby, are you not?'

The girl in question was as plain in feature as she was solid in her grasp of aeronautical design. 'Yes, Deputy Director.' Tibby stepped forward at Fran's beckoning.

'To Judge Magister Gabranth go, and with haste. Tell him of this attack. Tell him also of the bomb and bid him come to Draklor post haste.' Fran commanded before turning to the other students as Tibby turned swiftly on her heel and ran down the corridor to fulfil her task.

'The rest of you; find means to secure the prisoner and alert the healers below, then leave this place. To your homes go and be swift; Draklor is no longer safe.'

Like a covey of game birds disturbed by a passing hunter the students scattered, bright eyed with excitement and rapid speculation. As soon as the corridor was empty once more save for Fran herself, Balthier, and the unconscious robed man, Fran turned back to her partner.

Balthier had grown uncharacteristically and disturbingly quiet. He was sitting back against the wall and peeling apart the torn edges of his clothing to poke at the red, weeping, mouth of the wound across his torso. The blade, whether knife or something else Fran knew not, had scored down his rib cage from just under his left nipple to his sternum, but at least the injury was shallow and minor until it reached his stomach. It was the place where the sword had cut into the soft fleshy cavity of Balthier's sternum that was cause for most concern.

'This is not my fault.' His words had started to slur, 'I don't see how I can be blamed for this. He might just as likely have attacked you.'

Balthier looked up at her with brown eyes gone dull with the comfort of shock and blood loss; his fingers were caked in his own blood as he touched the wound. Almost absently he poked at a fold of something that most definitely should not see the light of day, as it tried to bulge out of the inner cavity of his body.

Fran pushed his hands away gently but firmly. 'It never is,' she told him. 'And think I do that this man came for you and no other. You attract trouble as the sparks fly upward.'

Balthier scowled face white and bloodless, 'I did not set out to antagonise bloody Faram. I've never even met the deity.'

Fran said nothing. There was nothing to say. As Viera Fran had no interest in Faram and cared little for the beliefs of other races beyond a vague, almost academic, curiosity. She knew that Balthier was not so much atheist as completely indifferent to the existence, or possible existence, of any deity or higher power. Balthier, Fran suspected, would suffer Faram to exist if Faram left him alone in turn.

Therefore she was left to wonder at what turn of events could have led an alleged kiltia to come against her partner. Then she wondered if it was foolish to even pose the question within the confines of her own thoughts. Fran had long held the view that Balthier existed to antagonise the natural order of creation, after all. It was only natural that the gods should come against him.

'Fran I don't appear to be able to feel my legs,' Balthier told her conversationally as Fran pressed her hands over the bulging wound across his stomach. The cut at its deepest was not wide, but it had gone deep enough to slice in twain skin, muscle, and protective tissue to expose the viscera within.

'Poison,' she told him simply, 'I can smell it; your blood flows tainted already.'

'Bugger,' Balthier tilted his head back, closing his eyes as he leaned against the wall, 'Should have just let myself be blown to bits – a swifter death than this.'

Fran ignored him casting a swift Esuna spell upon him instead of answering. His pallor was grey and his brow drenched in sweat. His right hand bled freely from many cuts and puncture wounds; it was also blistered with burns. Balthier sighed with relief when the Esuna took effect.

'What happened in Balfonheim?'

The question came as a surprise to Fran as she risked a curative spell only to watch it fail. Fran frowned, ever since the events of the previous year and Balthier's near fatal encounter with the Landis Phoenix he had demonstrated atypical reactions to magick. Dark Magicks bounced off him harmlessly and White magicks had increasingly limited effect – it was almost as if Balthier grew immune to Mist based magick with every passing day he lived.

Fran did not know the root cause of Balthier's magickal resistance but she found herself cursing it now. If aid did not come soon she would have to try and move him down to the hospital floors below and leave their prisoner to his own devices.

'Fran?' Balthier blinked at her through the sweat pouring down his brow, 'Experience has taught me that conversation usually flows more freely when both parties engage.' He prompted mildly. 'You have yet to tell me what tragedy you found in Balfonheim.'

'There was a Viera,' Fran told him finally. 'She was with young but took her life and the life of her unborn as well.'

Balthier shifted, moving his good hand to help keep pressure on his gut wound. 'Ah that is a tragedy then.' He said carefully. Fran did not respond. Balthier closed his eyes again and heaved a shuddering breath.

'You don't see many pregnant Viera wandering the byways of Ivalice,' he continued in the same conversational tone as Fran pressed one hand to the side of his neck to check his pulse. His skin seemed cold and clammy and his breathing was beginning to tremble; the poison was fast working. Fran cast another Esuna spell but could already tell the effect was weakening with each casting.

'Viera without the Wood are barren,' Fran said softly, straining her senses for some sign that the aid she had requested was on the way. Balthier opened his eyes and studied her curiously.

'So this unfortunate Viera was not an out-cast then?' He asked then, upon catching the slightest flicker of expression upon Fran's face, Balthier immediately corrected himself, 'Hmm, I see,' His dark eyes bored into her seeking out the root of the dilemma Fran faced. 'So this Viera was outcast from Wood but still with child? That makes the matter a trifle more complicated.' Balthier cocked his head to the side eyes sharp, 'Hume was he? The father I mean.'

'Yes,' Fran admitted, 'The Viera had claimed a hume, Ethain, as mate.' Fran shook her head, 'I know not how it was between them that they could have conceived without the Wood's blessing.'

Balthier's lips quivered, 'Really? You surprise me.'

Fran turned back to look at him quickly. His eyes danced with amusement despite his pain. She could almost hear the suggestive comments he was forcibly repressing, until finally his restraint broke down with an irrepressible smirk. 'Well in that case,' he drawled with a lascivious and completely feigned arching of his brows, 'I would be happy to demonstrate…..'

Fran gave Balthier a very level look trying to hide her smile, 'Now is not time for jest.'

'As you say Fran,' Balthier's voice slurred at the edges once more and he shifted, eyes flinching with pain. 'I suspect I shall be passing out in the next handful of heartbeats,' he met her eyes and his own were calm and serious, 'Will you wait until I'm ambulatory again to investigate this thorny matter, or shall I hold the fort here and await your return?'

Fran did not deny her intention to leave to investigate Fantl's death; Balthier understood her too well to accept any form of lie from her. Yet her ardour to leave was not so great that she would leave him when he needed her.

'Think I do that you had best be away with me,' she pointed out, 'you have outstayed your welcome here, it would appear.' Yet while she spoke truth there was some particle of lie to it. There were paths she must walk that he could not.

Balthier shook his head and scoffed derisively flapping a hand to encompass his current misfortune. 'This is nothing; a minor set back.' He argued back, eyelids drooping. 'Let Faram come if he has a bone to pick with me; I've sent worse threats than a god packing before.'

'And you are so sure you shall be victorious should Faram accept your challenge?' She asked him only half in jest as her hand cupped his cheek and lolling chin. Balthier smiled at her, his smile tinged with encroaching unconsciousness.

'I don't see why not,' he retorted bluffly, 'and if you insist on staying simply to ensure my safety then you might as well fetch up that scimitar and do me in right now.' He gave her a look, 'I may be gutted but I'll be damned thrice before I'll stand to be emasculated as well.'

Fran arched a brow, 'All things are possible when one challenges the gods, Balthier.'

Balthier waved that away, on the cusp of passing out. 'Go Fran, as soon as his honour the imposter is here. I will find you once I have cleared up this mess.'

Fran said nothing, finding good defence in silence. Balthier cracked open his eyes and smirked up at her as he slumped further down the wall and Fran moved to cradle his upper body against her chest.

'You should go alone in any regard.' He told her confidently. 'I'll wager that where you need to go I am not welcome to follow.'

He smiled gently, eyes closing again as he reached out with his blood covered hand for hers. He threaded his fingers with hers. 'If I remember correctly Golmore does not much care for me, and nor I for Golmore.'

Fran grew rigid, hand tense in his, 'I…..'

'Need to go back to the Wood.' Balthier finished for her opening his tired eyes once more.

'Fran credit me with some modicum of compassion and understanding, hmm? I am not so self-centred that I cannot see that this mystery is important. A Viera with babe died, you must find out why.' His lips twitched, 'It is the sort of thing a leading lady is expected to do, after all.'

Balthier closed his eyes for the final time. Fran said nothing at all as she watched him drift into a pained sleep; his fingers remained warm and steady twined with hers. Fran did not move a muscle until a troop of armed judiciary guards arrived with much clanking of iron and urgency some small time later.


	5. Chapter 5

**Archades – Draklor Laboratory: 708 O.V:**

Judge Magister Gabranth stood in the threshold of the medical bay, twenty-fifth floor of Draklor. Dressed in his off-duty attire the magister cast more than a passing resemblance to a man now generally considered dead. As always he was a brother pretending to be a brother; a living man in a dead man's boots. Right now he was also rather bemused.

The medical bay was a bright and cheerful place that tried hard to conceal the underlying truth that some of those who came to reside in the wing would inevitably die here. There were curtain cordoned cubicles separating each bed, and the curtains were dyed in bright hues shading to red and orange and deep indigo. There was an area to the far corner filled with hobby horses, rag dolls, toy soldiers, and doll houses where the Nabradian children resident of this floor could play. Brightly coloured hand drawn banners and bunting hung from the ceilings and walls and efficient nurses and white mages with kindly smiles passed along the beds making checks on the children.

Right at this moment most of the children were awake, despite the late hour, primarily due to the excitement created by the arrival of their newest bed-mate, the decidedly more than child sized director of aviation and engineering who was currently having the large gash in his torso stitched back together.

Magister Gabranth shifted his weight to lean against the doorframe. Despite the sterile medicinal smell that clung to this healing ward and the amorphous sense that this was a place of pain and fragility there was also an aura of efficient, confident, hope and optimism pervading the room enough to lift the spirits. The man in Gabranth's shoes could appreciate the faith and determination that permeated the air of the ward.

Behind his back an armoured man came up behind Gabranth from the corridor. Gabranth straightened his stance from where he had been leaning against the door frame.

'The deactivated incendiary device has been assessed by our explosives experts,' Zargabaath told him coming to stop in the doorway beside his younger compeer.

'Analysis confirms that the Viera spoke true; the device, had it detonated, would have caused an explosion of sufficient magnitude to do massive structural damage to Draklor and potentially the Quince Tower and the Amberline Armoury as well.'

Gabranth glanced at the stern, flat features of the most senior of Magisters with mild surprise, 'Aye,' he agreed, 'Did you suspect a falsehood in Fran's testimony?'

Zargabaath, helmet held under the crook of his left arm, met Gabranth's eyes, 'The Viera is faithful to Ffamran, her account is also second-hand, merely a recitation of what he told her.'

'Aye and you suspect Balthier would lie?'

Gabranth looked over to the man in question who was propped up on his elbows in one of the beds as a nurse wrapped his lower body in fresh white bandages. Fran sat demurely in a chair at his bedside and did not bat an eyelash as something the former sky pirate said to the pretty young nurse made her laugh and blush from head to toe. Gabranth shook his head, amused.

'I can see no reason for Balthier to go to these lengths, feigning an intruder's attack, disarming a bomb he set, allowing himself to be hurt in the process, only to call us in.' Gabranth shook his head, 'There is no profit in such a deception.'

'That we are aware of,' Zargabaath corrected archly. 'That we can posit no conclusive rationale for such a sweeping deception only proves we lack sufficient evidence one way or the other, but does not negate the possibility itself.'

Gabranth almost smiled, until he remembered that the man he now was, and most Archadians still assumed he had always been, was not much given to smiling.

'Methinks you are seeing phantoms in the shadows this night,' he argued gently. 'Balthier is perfectly capable of deception, I readily grant you, but not to this extent. His motives are usually transparent even if his methods are convoluted. The man has what he wants; he has no reason for deception.'

Zargabaath sighed, 'I do not argue with you Gabranth, but I cannot give my trust so readily. You say he has what he wants, but I ask you, what is that object? Why did he return to Archades, after so long as a wilful exile belligerent to the Empire that raised him?'

Gabranth kept quiet because he could not offer any answer. Balthier and Fran had made of Draklor their nest for some nine months and more and still many who believed they knew the partners well could not fathom why they had chosen to settle so, and here in Archades. Balthier had even gone so far as to grant Vaan and Penelo extensive use of the Strahl in the interim. This was indicative, as little else could be, of the sincerity of Balthier's assertion that he was here to stay, but it also threw up many questions.

'Perhaps we should pose our questions to the man himself?' Gabranth suggested as the healers departed Balthier's bedside and the pirate sunk down into the pillows with a glib comment and petulant frown.

'Yes,' the older man agreed but with reluctance. 'Let us hear what Ffamran has to say for himself.'

There was a certain grim edge to Zargabaath's tone, which amused Gabranth as he had heard the tale of what Ffamran had done to Zargabaath's daughter, Anna, embroiling her in his dastardly escape from Archades years past. It was fair to say, in light of this past bad blood, that Balthier was not Zargabaath's favourite returned dissident.

Zargabaath pursed his lips, 'It should prove instructional, if nothing else.'

Gabranth saw, as he and Zargabaath approached, Balthier say something to Fran, but could not hear the words. The Viera tossed her hair back behind her shoulders as she sat beside the bedside and said something in response that made Balthier chuckle.

'…….and I am saying that I am fine now; if you will delay your departure, don't use me as your excuse.'

Gabranth could not hear Fran's murmured response, as her words were pitched too low to discern. Balthier was more animated, as was his wont. The man plucked at the hem of the white sheet pulled up over his bandaged torso as he fidgeted in the bed. Gabranth noted that, for a man who had undergone a blood transfusion, and been induced to imbibe a cornucopia of vaccines and antidotes to flush the poison from his person, Balthier seemed quite spry.

'……alright, you will do as you please, I suppose, but I want it noted that I have been the very model of understanding.'

There was a smile playing at Balthier's lips as he spoke this last and Fran arched her brows disdainfully, sharing the jest that was just between them. The partners both turned to face the two offices of law and order in the Empire as they approached. Their twin expressions of blank impassivity did not waver until Balthier's lips curved up in habitually faintly mocking half smile.

'Ah, the inquisition begins. Good evening to you both, your honours Zargabaath and Gabranth.'

Balthier's greeting was cheerful and blithely irreverent. Fran said nothing but merely nodded faintly to Gabranth as he came to a halt at the foot of the bed.

'Balthier, Fran, I am pleased to see you are both without significant injury.'

He was now Gabranth nodded to each in turn and saw the quiver of amusement quirk Balthier's expression at the suggestion that being opened up from chest to sternum with a poison dagger was not a "significant" injury. Zargabaath quite notably remained stonily silent throughout the exchange.

'So has the Judiciary decided if I am lying or not yet?' Balthier asked without preamble. His heavily lidded eyes sparkled with insolent wit. 'No doubt I contrived my own disembowelling as a clever blind to divert attention from some manner of nefarious or ill-gotten scheme I have yet to spring upon the unsuspecting good people of the Empire, hm?'

Fran closed her eyes and shook her head in resigned exasperation. Beside Gabranth Zargabaath controlled his reaction with iron will power, but it was still possible to see him twitch slightly.

Gabranth felt a slight smile tickle his lips. Zargabaath, it seemed, had a lot to learn about the man Ffamran Bunansa had become. Balthier expected to be treated with universal suspicion and revelled in encouraging that suspicion in others, solely out of perverse and impish dark humour. He who now called himself Gabranth had learned that lesson the hard way and now strove not to give the ex-pirate the satisfaction of his games.

'No doubt,' he now agreed peaceably. 'Though one might question if you have not over-played your hand somewhat with that disclosure.'

Balthier's grin became wolfish, 'Merely sowing the seeds of misdirection, my good sir. It is what a good fifth column does, after all.'

Fran shifted in the chair, spearing Balthier with a tolerant but gently warning look. She crossed one leg over the other and turned her body slightly so it was clear she now addressed the two Magisters.

'Has the prisoner spoken?' She asked succinctly.

Gabranth shook his head, 'He still keeps to his silence.'

The man accused of trespassing within Draklor, setting a bomb, and then attempting to kill Balthier had been secured in Judiciary custody for some hours. He had not been interrogated at length as yet, but what questions had been levelled at the accused had been rebuffed with a wall of concentrated silence. Whoever the man was, he had been trained in the ways of resisting interrogation that seemed clear.

'Is that so?' Balthier drawled. 'Interesting; he was quite loquacious with me. Admittedly his conversation skill seemed a trifle limited, only extending to threats and accusation, but he talked well enough all the same.'

The former pirate sat up carefully in the bed, 'Perhaps you should apply the thumb screws and the ice baths, hmm? If I remember correctly those are the favoured methods employed by Magisters when engaging the reticent in conversation.'

The challenging glint in Balthier's eyes was all for Zargabaath the former pirate having decided, with a predator's skill, which of the two Judges was the better prey in his perpetual games of barbed wit.

Gabranth sighed. He knew better by now than to allow this deliberate attempt to antagonise him to succeed. He was not sure he could say the same for Zargabaath. He decided to speak up and prevent Balthier from needling the older Judge any further.

'We favour the rack and the electro-bath in this day and age.' He retorted mildly with a straight face.

Balthier's eyes flicked to him and twinkled with pleasure. 'Really?' the younger man's lips curved up. 'How progressive of you; torture, much as technology, must always move with the times.'

'Aye,' Gabranth agreed easily, 'The Magistry has a reputation to uphold, after all.'

Zargabaath twitched again in annoyance but Balthier seemed to relax, sharp smile giving way to a gentler one that acknowledged that he would not find his game of antagonism so easy this night. Gabranth was not surprised when Balthier settled into a patient silence. He had found that the younger man could be made much more agreeable if one played him at his own game instead of showing affront.

'You have questions for me no doubt?' Balthier prompted calmly after a moment.

'This man you accuse of attempted murder addressed himself as one of the Kiltia to you; is this not what you claimed?' Zargabaath levelled the question to Balthier. It was clear that Zargabaath had no intention of playing _any_ games this night. Gabranth shared a lightning quick glance with Fran. It seemed that both held their breath to see if Balthier would behave himself in response.

'Hmm,' Balthier nodded then paused taking the question without feigned insult much Gabranth and Fran's relief. 'He made mention of the Knights Kiltia and spoke oft of my seeming need to die.' The pirate considered a moment more. 'He did not, in so many words, ascribe the rank of cleric to himself however.'

'Had you ever seen this man before?' Zargabaath demanded.

Balthier afforded the older man a droll look. 'I haven't truly seen the little bugger at all.' He pointed out patiently. 'The sod wore a mask and a hood the entire time he was intent on killing me. I saw nothing of his face except his eyes and they were not sufficiently remarkable to make an identification one way or the other.'

'Then when you are discharged from bed-rest you will come to the gaol to identify the man.' Zargabaath commanded. Balthier accepted this with a casual shrug.

'As you say your honour,' he smiled slyly, 'That is what a good citizen of Empire should do, after all.'

Gabranth frowned down at both Fran and Balthier. 'Can you think of any reason why someone would come against you in such a manner?' He asked directly.

Balthier and Fran exchanged a look; there passed between them then a moment of silent communication. Balthier scowled after a moment and Fran's right ear twitched. Finally Balthier released a caught breath in frustration and turned back to the magisters. It was clear that as usual, Fran's will had prevailed.

'Not a precise motive, no.' Balthier said finally. 'And I'll be a Bangaa's uncle if I know what I have done to incur the wrath of Faram.' The pirate came to an abrupt and unnatural conversational standstill.

'And yet…..?' Gabranth prompted expanding his glance to incorporate the silent Fran.

It seemed clear to him that Fran was exerting silent influence on Balthier to confess to something he otherwise would not have disclosed. Gabranth found himself wondering just what illegal shenanigans the ex-pirates had engaged in this time. He very much hoped whatever it was would not demand that he arrest Balthier as that would be decidedly awkward.

'Senator Etteran has directly threatened my life on more than one occasion.' Balthier said flatly after a long drawn out pause. The sentence seemed to dangle in the air, incongruous and strange. Both Zargabaath and Gabranth reacted in complete surprise.

'Madrigalise Etteran?' Gabranth knew of no other Senator Etteran, but he felt it necessary to clarify all the same. He could not countenance the notion that the forthright, ethical, hard working Senator Etteran of his acquaintance would ever threaten anyone.

Balthier nodded. 'The very same.' He flapped a hand diffidently. 'The good lady does not much care for me.' He shot Fran a slightly sour look. 'I had not thought to mention it at all. I had mostly assumed the lady merely made a point of threatening all returning dissidents who enter her constituency.'

'You must have mistaken her intent,' Gabranth told him firmly. Balthier merely shrugged his shoulders and then winced as the movement aggravated his stitched stomach.

'Possibly,' He met Gabranth's eyes. 'However I am not sure how one can misinterpret the meaning behind the following assertion that I need to be: "leashed, contained, and ultimately tamed" as anything but hostile.'

'What?' Gabranth stared at Balthier. He could not imagine the good woman of his acquaintance saying such things. Balthier had to be lying…..and yet, Gabranth did not think he was. There was no reason for him to do so and despite the misgivings Gabranth might have about Balthier, the man was not a habitual liar. He would not make baseless allegations against someone of Etteran's good standing in the capital.

Zargabaath interestingly did not dismiss the matter out of hand either. Instead he scrutinised Balthier thoughtfully.

'The Senator has visited Draklor?' He asked in such a way that it became apparent that the answer was of some import.

Balthier watched Zargabaath curiously as he answered, 'Many times. She had papers that legitimised her presence as part of the monthly audit inspections of the labs.'

Zargabaath brows drew together, 'Senator Etteran has no remit within the joint Magisterium and Senate inspections of Draklor. In fact her duties within the Senate do not involve a purview of Draklor at all.'

Balthier's eyebrows rose in obvious, and equally obviously unfeigned, surprise. 'Well it would have been nice to know that before now.' He said after a quick glance thrown Fran's way, 'I could have barred entry to the vicious old bag.'

'Balthier,' Gabranth spoke out before he could think better of it. 'Such language is beneath you.'

Balthier arched a brow, 'Interesting that you should think so.'

The former pirate turned his attention to Zargabaath, reclining a little more fully against his mounded pillows. 'Etteran has never made an overt move against me, nor given a clear indication of her intent. Had she ever given a hint of direct intent to use me, or murder me, I would have reported it.'

'Indeed?' Zargabaath did not look convinced. 'And you would surrender yourself to the protection of Archadian law without taking matters into your own hands?'

Balthier just studied Zargabaath carefully for a long moment. 'Of course I would.' He said in the flat tones of one trying to explain a rudimentary fact to a slow-witted child. 'Any man worth his salt will always look for others to fight his battles for him, after all.'

There was a pause as his last words hung in the air. Balthier's brows knitted together and he glanced over at Fran. It was clear that something had just occurred to the man.

'Hm,' Balthier pursed his lips but said no more. Zargabaath rather pointedly cleared his throat.

'Ffamran,' his rough, yet perfectly modulated voice took on a chiding tone. 'I have known you since the moment of your birth, Bunansa. Whatever thought has just entered your mind you will declare it or I will take you into custody.' Zargabaath's dark eyes almost, _almost_, seemed to gleam. 'And I will personally ensure you cannot escape captivity until I am satisfied you have told me everything you think you know.'

Balthier blinked at him, seeming slightly startled by the almost affectionate affectation to the older Judge's tone, despite the obvious threat in his words. There was another moment's pause as Balthier considered the likelihood that Zargabaath would be able to carry out his threat.

'I wonder if maybe I am being set up,' Balthier conceded quietly.

Zargabaath nodded as if this had already occurred to him. 'Indeed.' He agreed sagely.

'Had you killed the man who attacked you, without evidence that he was indeed a threat it could have caused a great deal of trouble.' Zargabaath's tone became dry as a bone. 'There are enough people in the city who are already suspicious of your presence that should bodies start to fall in the corridors of Draklor, they would demand you be stripped of your directorship immediately.'

'And had the bomb detonated….' Balthier began with a scowl.

'Then you would have been accused of sabotage,' Zargabaath finished the sentence for him, 'And most likely your life would be forfeit.'

'There are many in the Capital that mistrust your intentions and your freedom.' Zargabaath reiterated. Balthier met his eyes, his displeasure very clear.

'And why should I not be free? I have never formally been accused of any crime within the Empire, after all.'

'You are a maverick without political affiliation, without any bindings of patriotism, without any restraints.' Zargabaath countered. 'You are, in essence, the greatest threat to Archadian security presently at large.' Zargabaath smiled without humour. 'There are many who feel the Emperor is a fool to give you free rein in Draklor, solely by virtue of your lineage without consideration of your past actions against the Empire.'

Balthier scowled so that a deep crease formed between his brows. He clearly did not like these facts though he could not, and did not, deny them. Looking pale and drawn the young man sank further into his pillows and said nothing. There was precious little that could be said. Fran stirred.

'Bring in soldiers,' she said succinctly. 'Let there be troops along these halls as there once was.'

'Fran?' Balthier turned to stare at her in open surprise. The Viera offered a vague shrug.

'I must depart, but if there is conspiracy to frame you I would not allow the trap to spring in my absence.' Fran gave him a pointed look. 'Such a plan is well suited for you. Readily I can see you lured within – the bait today you almost fell to.'

Fran held Balthier's eyes for a long moment until Balthier dropped eye contact with a petulant twist of his lips, 'Fine,' the younger man grumbled, 'but no bloody Bastiffs; I can't stand the brutes.'

Fran nodded and turned her penetrating gaze on the two Judges. 'If such a plan exists to topple Balthier it seems like as not that Larsa too will be forfeit.' She pointed out calmly. 'Should Balthier fall from grace Larsa will lose an ally, and be made vulnerable before the enemies that yet remain in the shadows.'

Gabranth frowned watching Zargabaath keenly. It seemed to him that the elder Judge was privy to a greater knowledge than Gabranth himself regarding potential unrest in the Capital; as Larsa's sworn protector he did not like this. The older man, deliberately disregarding Gabranth's unease for the moment, nodded sagely.

'A guard will be posted throughout Draklor and access shall be restricted to the public at all times.' The elder magister shifted his helmet under his arm. 'We will allow the word to profligate that you, Bunansa, are under suspicion as well as protection. We shall see if the rats will take _our _bait.'

Balthier sneered, 'And I am to be that bait, I take it?'

Zargabaath almost smiled, 'Yes, Ffamran, you are the bait.'


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Hello all, sorry about the long wait for an update. I could give you excuses but I'm sure you have better things to do than read my whining. I also must apologise for not answering all reviews for the last chapter, particularly those that came in the last few weeks. I thank everyone reading and reviewing unreservedly and promise I will answer individual reviews once more from now on; life just got in the way recently I'm afraid. ;)_

* * *

**Wells of hidden intent in a place where the land waits, weeping:**

For Lente it was the culmination of a long journey; a nightmare of the flesh and a dream of the mind. The cavern she stood within was a huge gaping hollow in the many chambered heart of Ivalice. This place was secret even to those who themselves had become clandestine far beyond the waking reaches of men's minds.

Here was the resting place of one of the first ones, Guardian of the dawn times, child of Ivalice. Lente could hear the first one breathing as she stood in this cold and rough carven place. Ice and quartz shimmered over ragged worn walls and stalactites bit at the air like drawn daggers; this was not a place that welcomed the intrusion of mortal flesh.

'I am here to pay my penance,' Lente addressed herself to the walls, to the creeping frost that never thawed and the cold brilliance of the green and indigo flashing pillars of ice that encapsulated this lair. 'I am Lente – and know I do the Name not spoken.'

Deep in the cold heart of Ivalice something stirred.

* * *

**Imperial City Archades: 708 O.V: **

The Strahl circled smoothly and came into dock high above the residences of the Archadian capital. A flock of the omni-present Draklor apprentices gathered in the docking bay, sixth-fifth floor of Draklor, avidly curious. A small contingent of Archadian Imperial Hoplites clanked forward as the boarding ramp descended and the Strahl's hatch opened.

'Um, hello?' The sunny featured blonde girl in the sunset pink silk pantaloons and sleeveless bodice smiled nervously at the soldiers who stood in a feigned casual ring below her.

'Greetings,' the hoplite captain offered up the traditional Archadian bow, 'Under orders from his honour Magister Zargabaath I am afraid I must ask you for proof of identity before I can let you enter Draklor.' The hoplite, who in line with government policy had removed his helmet to address the young lady, shifted a little nervously, 'We are also required to search your vessel miss.'

One of the other hoplites turned to glare at his captain, 'Are yer ruddy daft, Roger? That's _Penelo _– you know – the _Emperor's_ Penelo,' The hoplite pointed out with particular emphasis, 'An' the Director will have our arses in a sling if we go mucking about with his ship.'

Roger, the young captain of this rather inexperienced squad, turned to glower back at his friend and supposed subordinate, 'Orders are orders. The Director's not going to be none too impressed if we let some interlopers get by us an' blow the place up now, will he?'

'Right but…' began the argumentative soldier.

Penelo stood at the top of the ramp in mild bemusement as the soldiers began to bicker with one another. 'Um….you can take a look around in here if you want to.' She offered as Vaan stepped up beside her and blinked at the squabbling guard. 'We don't have anything to hide.'

The hoplite captain turned back to Penelo and Vaan, blushing to roots of his fair hair. 'Er, thank you miss.' The man bowed again. 'Forgive us, but there was an incident of security and we have a job to do.' The nervous captain flicked his eyes upward and almost bobbed his head in another near bow, 'You understand?'

'Er….not really,' Vaan conceded and Penelo jabbed him in the stomach swiftly, pasting an open and cheerful smile on her face as she spoke over him.

'Really, it's alright.' She dragged Vaan down the ramp. 'You do what you have to do.'

Vaan yanked his arm from Penelo's grip and rubbed at the nail marks she had left on his bare skin, 'What's going on here? I didn't think soldiers were allowed in Draklor anymore.'

The captain waved for two of his men to board the Strahl as he addressed the two sort-of sky pirates and otherwise honoured guests of the Empire. 'There was an attempt on master Bunansa's life two nights ago; the perpetrator also attempted to blow up the lab. We're here to ensure that no further attempts at sabotage can take place.'

'Someone tried to kill Balthier?' Vaan and Penelo exchanged a somewhat aghast look, 'But it hasn't even been a _year_ since he last died.' Penelo pointed out a little scandalised. 'You'd think he'd at least wait a whole year before he upset someone again.'

The Captain blinked at the two Rabanastrans, 'Er….right you are miss.' He licked his lips nervously, 'Can I ask your business here?'

'We came to see Balthier and Fran,' Penelo stated simply. 'Balthier gets very tetchy if we don't bring his ship back for maintenance every six weeks.' She smiled sweetly. Vaan nodded his head in amiable agreement.

The hoplite captain relaxed slightly, 'I'm afraid Mistress Fran is not currently present, but I shall be happy to escort you both to Master Bunansa.'

Vaan frowned, 'Fran's not here?'

'No sir.'

Vaan and Penelo turned to exchange another look between them, 'She left Balthier here, alone?' Penelo asked in complete surprise.

'Even though someone's trying to kill him; again, I mean.' Vaan's brows bunched together, 'They're up to something.'

Without waiting for the hopelessly inept hoplite captain to catch up with them Vaan and Penelo ran straight for the doors to Draklor and the elevator to the seventieth floor. If there was a mad scheme afoot the two Rabanastran sky pirates wanted in on it. After all, it would likely fall to Vaan and Penelo to make sure neither Balthier nor Fran died in the proceedings; just like always.

* * *

**The first Guardians lair:**

'Blood is hot, blood is life; blood is fire and it is ice. Let blood of mine be blood of thine. Hear me and hear my word.'

Scarlet fell in an arcing wash from the deep and pumping slice Lente tore across her own slender forearm with the nails of her other hand. Four parallel runnels of ripped flesh welling up with hot liquid copper and crimson fire; she watched the blood patter across stone and ice. She watched her blood freeze where it fell.

'This is where I pay my penance.' It was easy, so very easy, to rip and tear at one's person when one's heart has been stolen and one's mind is filled only with regret. Lente opened her veins and fell to her knees. She called with mind and voice to that which sleeps within and beneath.

'Let this land be renewed; the balance cast askew, power hoarded by those without the means to govern wisely. The mother is angry. I who was once mother, once queen, once Lente of the Way and the Wood and the Word, call to thee.'

Beneath her knees the frozen ground shivered as above her bowed head fangs of ice crashed to pieces upon the shaking ground. The very rock roared in answer to her call – the sleeper awakened. There was fire in the heart of ice, blue as the coldest sky. That burning orb filled the far reaches of the chamber with flickering shadow and the Guardian of the Dawning Days woke for the first time in several hundred years.

Lente gasped, swaying on her knees as her blood scented the air with the hot reek of metal, salt, and violence.

'I am Lente, once mother, once queen, once lover: I am she who was betrayed and in turn did betray. Know me, Ancient One. Know me and know your Name.'

Teeth of ice flashed in a thousand glacial shades; twilight brilliance captured in a horror maw wider than the deepest crevice within the broken paths of Silver Floe. Steam rose like a geyser as the old, old beast exhaled on a silent snarl. Rock scraped against stone; the mountain given life and flesh and animation. The beast waited, waited for its name and its purpose.

* * *

**Draklor Laboratory:**

Balthier Bunansa lay on his back on the floor of the huge chamber that dominated the seventieth floor of Draklor. He stared straight up and tapped his hands over the brocade of his burgundy and gold accented vest.

'A little to the left,' he gestured with one hand.

'Bloop,' Smith the Rook followed directions beautifully and using the articulated extending arm attachment that came as standard with his decidedly atypical design began to draw a pentacle in chalk on the ceiling high above Balthier's head.

'I could do that for you, master Balthier,' Nono, sitting on the floor beside his beloved patron sounded decidedly sullen and dejected. He looked up at the rook with mutinous jealousy. 'You don't need that machine, kupo.'

Balthier, completely failing to detect anything amiss with his fluffy compatriot, shook his head. 'Nonsense; Smith's glossair propellers allow him to ascend far greater heights.'

Nono stared despairingly at his hume master, 'I can fly just as high.' He lied somewhat pitifully. He despaired that he should be surpassed in his master's affection by a metal orb with a gloss air engine. It was Nono's place to assist his master in all his scientific musings – not the place of an usurper machine with negligent conversational acumen.

Balthier, oblivious to his Moogle companions growing displeasure, continued on as if Nono had never spoken. 'Plus there is the matter that Smith cannot talk, whereas you can. I would sooner have you here, where we can discuss this,' he pointed at the pentacle Smith continued to draw across the ceiling. 'Then up there where I would have to make do with the conversational asides of a machine with a limited lexicon.'

'You want my help?' Nono brightened with renewed hope. His pom pom plume quivered. 'Kupo-po – really?'

For the first time Balthier sensed that he might be missing something. He glanced curiously at the Moogle. 'Well of course. Why wouldn't I?'

Nono averted his eyes and played with the hem of his green tunic, 'No reason. No reason; Kupo.'

Balthier frowned and might have asked a question except at that moment Smith began to descend from the heights having completed his assigned task. Careful of his injury Balthier sat up slowly as the Rook buzzed before him, level with his head.

'Bl-ooop.'

'Yes, thank you,' Balthier nodded, 'very good work.' Nono glared. Balthier chose to ignore this completely; it seemed the wisest course of action.

He craned his neck to study the pentacle a moment and then rose gingerly and walked over to his desk pushed to the far wall. The stitched laceration running down his side twinged as he moved. Balthier rubbed at his side absently. He supposed he should be grateful that alchemical curative potions still offered the usual healing affects, as it was already damnably inconvenient that his magickal – problems – denied him the swift healing a curaga could afford.

'And this was the only reference material you could find, was it?'

Balthier asked the Rook as he took up the open leather bound book on the desk and regarded the sketched diagram of a replica of the pentacle Smith had just etched onto his ceiling.

Smith had presented him with the book yesterday, this one slim volume proving to be the culmination of his attempts to discover any information on the strange drawings plaguing his dreams of late. The pages of the book had yellowed with age and crackled dustily when Balthier turned the page. He tapped his fingers over the delicate page thoughtfully.

'Blop-bloop.' Smith buzzed around the desk to hover expectantly at about shoulder height. The single red laser beam emanating from the Rook's metal carapace glanced over the top of the desk. A moment later the duster attachment extended from the hatch in Smith's front and the Rook began dusting with vigour. Balthier again chose to ignore this. Ignorance, while rarely ever a sound policy for dealing with life's little foibles, at least offered the advantage of convenience for the time being.

Nono leapt up onto the desk so he could peer at the open book, somewhat deliberately upsetting a pile of stacked papers in the process. Smith's one red eye fixed on Nono's snowy white breast with a seeming intensity that might, to one more given to flights of fancy than Balthier, be seen as a touch sinister.

'Kupo; why are you studying Vieran elementalism master Balthier?'

* * *

**The White Cap: **

Fran stepped through the doors to the tavern wrinkling her nose as a wave of redolent odour made up of a pungent mix of heat, malt, sweat and ill-washed bodies assailed her nose. Breathing shallowly Fran steeled herself against the shock of such close quarters and scanned the lower floor of the pirate tavern.

Viera were still sufficiently rare in these parts that Fran was inured to the looks cast her way and the fact that she received those looks more because of her own infamy than her race was one that had yet to truly penetrate her thoughts. Thus Fran walked forward to the bar. The bar-man, an old seadog blessed with enough native wit to have lived long enough to retire to the land, turned to face her, dish towel over one shoulder. He nodded with a certain deference to this most famous of Viera.

'I am looking for the hume Ethain,' Fran explained without preamble. The bar man nodded and gruffly jerked his chin in the direction of the upper mezzanine floor of the tavern, which had been only recently rebuilt, where, in a dark corner, a very young hume male tried to pretend that he was not weeping into his tankard.

Fran nodded her thanks to the taciturn bar man and ascended the stairs to the upper floor, ignoring with practiced aplomb the stares that followed her progress with avid interest.

As she approached his lonely table in the corner Fran was better able to make assessment of the young man, dark hair worn to his shoulders and in need of a wash, head down as he stared into the dregs of his drink, clothes creased and dirty.

'You are Ethain, he who was mate to Fantl?'

The hume, reeking of too strong drink and deepest, vilest misery, jerked his wide but vacant eyes up to her in surprise. It was clear that so trapped in his grief that he refused all company, all food, and all possible avenues of solace, was this hume that the rest of Ivalice might well have simply ceased to exist for all the attention he paid the life passing him by.

'W-who are you?' The youth, barely more than a stripling by Fran's reckoning, stared at her. His look was one of aching pain and yearning more than suspicion or anger. His gaze seemed to linger, almost guiltily, on her ears and her slender stature for longer than politic before skittering away.

'I am called Fran.' She told him pulling out the vacant chair opposite Ethain and sitting down demurely. The hume youth's head jerked up and his glossy brown eyes, surprisingly reminiscent of Balthier's in hue and warmth if not in the depth of humour and intellect, flicked up and fixed upon her once again.

'_The _Fran?' he asked in open astonishment.

Fran blinked, 'I am Fran,' she said carefully. 'I know not if I am the only, or merely one Fran among many.'

The hume stared and Fran noted his soft and almost delicate features, the full lips and the smoothness of his cheeks. The near effeminacy of his features did not move Fran and she found herself thinking that this hume's face appeared only half finished and lacking in sophistication. He had the manners of one younger than his years, for she suspected in truth this Ethain was closer to Balthier's four and twenty years than to that of the youth Vaan – yet in maturity lagged far behind both those other humes.

'I've heard of you,' the boy said in soft wonderment, 'You are a sky pirate. You are _the _sky pirate; you and the pirate Balthier. You are legends here – and everywhere.'

Fran cocked her head to the side, 'Tis true that pirate I have been,' she admitted cautiously, 'but presently I walk the land as do you.'

The boy nodded his head vigorously but did not seem to be listening, instead his eyes were alight with some more joyous thought as his grief fell away momentarily.

'Fantl – Fantl spoke of you often.' Almost instantly upon speaking the word of his lost Viera mate the life left his eyes. He dropped his gaze and stared down into the near empty depths of his tankard.

'You were her hero; she wanted to be just like you.' He whispered under his breath.

Fran's ears twitched in surprise, 'But I knew her not.'

Fran was in confusion. That this hume youth might know of her was not entirely unexpected, although oft times Balthier's theatrics proved enough distraction to erase her own presence from the mind of Ivalice's collective audience. Still Fran had never considered that those of her own kind, her exiled sisters, might watch her actions upon the stage of Ivalice. The thought of such a thing and the suggestion of incipient judgement therein, unsettled Fran.

Ethain looked up again. 'Why are you here?' he asked.

Fran met his dulled eyes looking beyond the patina of his grief to something deeper. She was pleased when this soft youth had strength enough to hold her gaze.

'I am come to find the truth of Fantl's fate,' she said simply, 'And you, hume, are going to help me.'

* * *

**Draklor Laboratory: **

'Kupo; why are you studying Vieran elementalism master Balthier?'

Nono's question snapped him from his reverie. Balthier blinked and looked down at the open book in his hand.

'Buggered if I know,' Balthier confessed honestly looking at the five pointed star held within a circle that made up the pentacle. 'Vieran you say, hm?'

'Oh yes, kupo.' Nono swelled up with pride; pleased beyond measure that he was able to so ably demonstrate his usefulness.

'And what does it mean?'

Balthier's finger rested on the top most point of the star. The author had written the word "fire" just above the apex of the point of the first arm of the star. "Wood" and "sky" held position at west and east respectively and "water" and "mist" formed the legs of the star. The perfect pentagon in the centre of the design remained blank and for some reason that struck Balthier as wrong; the diagram was in complete he seemed to sense this intuitively, like the urges of a half remembered dream. There was some part of the equation missing; something vital.

'Well?' he asked again when Nono remained silent. He glanced at the Moogle, noting that his fluffy white head hung low and once again he had averted those big, emphatic eyes.

'I don't know, kupo.' Nono finally lifted his sorrowful eyes. 'I will do better. I will find out.' There was something slightly desperate in Nono's tone and Balthier frowned in confusion.

'Do better than what?' He asked perplexed. Balthier pushed his thumb into the book to mark his place and shut the book. He turned slightly to face his third crewman. 'Nono whatever is wrong with you?'

'Kupo-po!' Much to Balthier intense surprise Nono suddenly leapt forward and threw himself at Balthier's left forearm, which he had lowered to brace him against the table. Nono clamped his small arms around Balthier's forearm as if clinging to a life preserver. 'Don't dismiss me master Balthier. I'm better than the robot.'

'Better than the…?' Balthier blinked and found himself looking up at Smith, hovering attentively across the desk.

'Blopp.' The Rook enunciated and the red point of its one eye seemingly fixed on Nono's fluffy head once again. Balthier stared for a moment and then rather roughly shook Nono off him.

'For the love of the gods,' he snapped irritated, 'It's a machine.' He stared down at Nono with a quelling glare. 'You cannot honestly be jealous of a bloody machine.'

'Bloop.' Smith stated and Balthier gave the Rook a somewhat quizzical look. It could only be his imagination that ascribed a slightly offended air to that particular "bloop". Balthier shook his head to clear it. He didn't have time to cater to the egos of an insecure Moogle and a robot that wasn't even supposed to possess an ego to begin with.

'Snap to,' he said firmly not sure if he was addressing Nono exclusively or incorporating the Rook as well. 'I have a dilemma in need of a solution and I expect my crew to act accordingly.'

Nono stared at him with huge liquid black eyes; eyes that appeared considerably moister than they usually did. 'Forgive me master Balthier.' Nono wriggled his nose and Balthier had the mortifying impression that the Moogle was suppressing tears. Blue bollocky blazes; he did not have time for this nonsense.

'Buggery hell,' Balthier mumbled snatching up his diminutive companion under one arm and gesturing for the Rook to follow him across the chamber as he held the book in the other hand.

'Nono, regardless of Smith's usefulness you are not, and nor shall be, dismissed, replaced, or otherwise ousted from the crew. Is that understood?'

'Understood kupo,' Nono muttered sulkily.

'And you,' Balthier shot a dark look at the far-too-clever for its own good Rook, 'You are supposed to be a mechanised cleaning aid. I hope I don't have to remind you of what might happen should anyone suspect that you are not merely a robotic duster, hm?'

'Bloop.' The Rook stated and Balthier once again regarded the construct with a very level eye. It was frankly amazing how much emotion nuance could be extracted from one simple sound.

Balthier sighed. The idea that Nono and his father's sentient machine might have entered into a jealous feud for Balthier's attention was not remotely flattering. Well, not _that _flattering, at any rate.

'So to surmise,' Balthier moved on determinedly, 'the pentacle is of Vieran design. The author of this book on ancient mythology suggests that this elementalism once formed part of a cult worship of the Viera popular in pre-Galtean times. Hmm,' Balthier smiled momentarily sidetracked by the notion, 'Humes worshipping the Viera? Fancy that.'

He shook his head in amusement. Although, truthfully, of all idols of worship he had encountered in his life, Balthier could best understand exalting the Viera, he supposed. Or at least some of them, he amended. Well……one of them, at any rate, and that was more deep respect built on a foundation of bedrock trust than worship in the tradition sense of the word. At least most of the time; hmm….but anyway, he had digressed far enough from the point at hand.

Balthier deposited Nono onto the reclining sofa in the far corner of the chamber along with the book. Balthier himself, despite the tenderness of his still healing wound, felt the need for locomotion. He paced back to the centre of the chamber and looked up at the ceiling.

'Fire, wood, sky, water, mist; five elements for five points of the star,' He gestured with a wave of his hand to each point as his mind worked through the mystery. 'Each element is perfectly in balance within the circle. But what is the circle; what is the significance of the outer ring? What is the pentagon in the centre for?'

'Bloop.' Smith suggested.

Balthier sighed, 'That is not enormously helpful.' He frowned stretching tentatively at the waist, extending his arms and twisting to keep himself limber as he felt his mind sliding slowly towards a brick wall of incomprehension.

'Perhaps it is allegorical?' He hoped not. Allegory was not his favourite thing. Generally speaking he liked his spades to be spades and his cryptic metaphors few and far between.

'The Viera do not like allegory, kupo.' Nono pointed out from his perch on the sofa, almost eclipsed from view by the book he struggled to hold on his lap.

'Hmm,' Balthier walked back to the sofa, Smith buzzing along beside him, and sat down carefully. He suppressed a yawn and scrutinised the state of his cuffs as he considered.

'It would be helpful if I could ascertain the point behind the pentacle; is it merely an illustrated representation of the forces of nature, or does it pertain to some particular purpose?'

And why was it so important? Balthier added silently as an afterthought. He leaned back into the sofa and stared up at the pentacle on the ceiling, 'Wood, air, fire, water mist, hmm? The mist and wood makes sense if this is of Vieran origin; one is revered the other feared.' He began to tap his fingers over the brocade of his vest once more as he found himself unable to draw any more conclusive connections between the elements of the pentacle and what little he knew of Vieran beliefs.

'Well this is a puzzle isn't it?' he muttered, not particularly cheered by the thorny riddle now adorning his ceiling.

It was at that moment while Balthier was still pondering a variety of imponderables that the great spire of Draklor was quaked by the first of many seismic tremors and the first rubble of an earthquake shook the tiered city of Archades to its foundations.

Balthier leapt to his feet, only to fall back down again as the floor bucked underneath him.

'What the bloody blue blazes is happening _now_?' He demanded of no one in particular. No one saw fit to answer him, which was as well, for had he known what was truly going on he would not have liked it in the slightest.

* * *

**The first Guardian's lair:**

In the deep frozen dark of Ivalice's hollow heart the wyrm turned and the very fates held their breath as Lente, kneeling as the supplicant must, in the frozen pools of her own blood, opened her arms wide and screamed loud enough to make ever-lasting echoes in the cloistered channels of this subterranean cage.

'Ragnarok!' She screamed the name of that which has been forgotten even in the nightmares of the eldest mortal mind. 'Ragnarok: I call thee to my service.'

Teeth flashed, fire blazed, ice to biting steam rose to fill the ancient hollow in Ivalice's secret heart. The great leveller, Ivalice's merciless child, rose towards the hidden sky and the mountain cracked in twain.

When Ragnarok roared Ivalice screamed. The judgement of the elements had been called once more into being.


	7. Chapter 7

**Ripples around Ivalice: Ragnarok wakes**

**Epicentre - Kerwon: Mount Bur-Omisace**

Kebawn Aeduluc, Kiltias and mountain warden, staggered on the stone steps to Bur Omisace's main chamber. All around him pilgrims screamed, cried out, fell to the ground and the mountain seemed to roar, quaking with fury. Kebawn dragged himself up, trusting his fellow Kiltia to tend to the pilgrims. His robes were soiled and the flesh of his palms abraded from his fall. As he tried to look up and away across the tiered splendour of the rising temple of Bur-Omisace it seemed that the very horizon shuddered, trembled, and threatened to fall.

'Holy father preserve us all,' staggering to his feet, teeth clicking loosely as his jaws reverberated and his spine quivered with the force of the tremors shaking the mountain down to its foundation, Kebawn threw himself up the steps and against the huge, solid doors of the Gran Kiltias chamber.

'Sanctified lady, we must escape!' Kebawn fell again to his knees as another thunderous tremor shook the ground under his feet. Crystal light chandeliers crashed to the ground, shattering into glittering shards that danced and twitched over the rumbling ground.

Kebawn crawled over that jumping blanket of knife like shards towards the Gran Kiltias throne, 'My lady!'

Seated on the throne, face serene in slumber, the new Gran Kiltias, the lady Marana, did not stir. Kebawn hesitated to touch her sanctified and venerated form even in such dire circumstance. 'My lady…'

The eyes of the young helgas snapped open, blind and milky pale. Her thin face suffused with the vaguest suggestion of animation. 'Hello Kebawn.' She said as large cracks began to sunder the blue and green walls of the chamber. A large piece of the ceiling fell to the ground scant feet behind her throne. Daylight blazed through the hole and with it the thunderous bellow of a mountain enraged. Marana's tapered, pointed ears quivered and her spiderweb fine hair floated about her head in a swirl of static.

'My lady we must depart –the mountain falls!'

Marana smiled, sharp teeth pinching against her bottom lip, 'Yes I know. It is exciting, isn't it?'

Kebawn stared as somewhere beyond the chamber one of the outer buildings of the temple was reduced to rubble which, in turn, tumbled down the mountainside. 'We must leave your grace.' Kebawn beseeched his venerable charge. 'We must depart to a place of safety.'

Marana cocked her head to the side keenly, 'Ah, but there is the rub,' she purred. 'For where can we, yet living, flee, when only the dead are truly safe from Ragnarok?'

* * *

**Ripples spreading outward: Golmore**

'Sister what is this?' Mjrn clutched at her ears, trying to push them back and down around her head as she came close to folding double against the horrible, horrible sound.

'To Deep Root sanctuary we must go,' Jote shouted to be heard over the noise as deep in the passage of chained light ancient trees tore free of their rooted sentry posts and fell screaming to the ground; sundered, severed, murdered by a revolt by Ivalice herself. Golmore screamed and screamed and Viera screamed too, in terror and confusion and mounting panic.

'But I do not understand,' Mjrn stumbled after her fleet foot sister and the rest of her tribe as they fled Eruyt for the ancient sanctuary of the Deep Root sanctum, 'Why does the Wood scream so? What is happening?'

Running through the paths of Golmore Mjrn was frightened to see the Treants in a frenzy, beating their long and gangly arms against the jungle floor, pounding and pounding senselessly as great fissures tore open through the undergrowth, like endless dark and gaping mouths. Hellhounds howled and forfeited their endless bloodlust to run beside the Viera seeking the promised safety of Golmore's most secret bower.

All around the trees fell, the fiends howled, and the great cloistered canopy of Golmore Jungle swayed, trembled, and collapsed. The Wood fell, Ivalice shook with fury, and for the first time in decades the Viera of Golmore looked up to see the sun pierce the jungle's leafy veil.

Mjrn stopped to stare as great holes appeared in the canopy as one tree after another toppled, fell, and brought down more in its wake. Her ears throbbed with the near wild terror of Golmore; she had never known the Wood to be so afraid. She had never known such upheaval in her life. Mrjn stopped running, wanting to curl up under one of the thick and uprooted tree trunks and hide from the screaming Wood and the roaring earth.

'Come sister,' Jote's hand on her forearm was hard as the knotted bark of a fire-hardened wooden stave. Jote's grave face was, as ever, untouched by the panic she too must hear in the voice the Wood. 'To the Deep Roots we go.'

Mjrn sobbed and gasped and stumbled into running again, struggling to keep up with her sister and her Elder. Her nose bled, her ears were all but deafened, and tears blinded her eyes.

I am afraid, Mjrn thought, the Wood knows only fear and so do I.

Finally they came to the Deep Roots, a place where sun could never reach, a place of dark and verdant shadow, greens so rich that they appeared black and a tree so large, so wide, whose roots were so deep, that they reached to the very centre of Ivalice herself and stretched further still. It was said in the legend of the Viera that the tendrils of this great tree into reached through the soil of every land in Ivalice.

Yggdrasil: the tree of life.

Growing inverted against the grain of nature's order, Yggdrasil was all roots and hidden girth, deep buried under black, black soil. No rising canopy for this tree, no high branches. Roots all was the tree of life; Roots that ran deep and fed the lands; roots that reached far to the dark heart of Ivalice.

'Hurry,' Jote shepherded the tribe into the open knot hollow within the huge tree, whose branches all ran underground and whose leaves were large as a purvama beneath the carved ceiling of the earth. Mrjn helped the older sisters of the tribe to climb the gnarled and exposed upper branches of the mostly submerged tree, which twisted like the tentacles of a mythic insect. One by one the Viera of Golmore descended into the depths of Yggdrasil leaving just Jote and Mrjn left on the surface.

'Sister what is happening?' Mjrn asked again, never once doubting that her eldest sister would have an answer.

Jote stared through her younger sister, but it was not the abstraction of communion with the Wood that so fractured her attention this time. Instead it was a darker and more personal introspection that claimed her attention.

'I do not know.' Jote said finally and there was fear in her eyes where once there had only been the surety of the Wood.

* * *

**Ripples Spreading Wider and Further: Archades**

'Whoa!' Vaan reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall of the corridor as the Draklor tower trembled from tip to foundation stone. Penelo grabbed on to his shoulder to steady herself as everything began to shake and a thick, heavy, torturous subterranean roaring sound filled their ears.

'What's happening?' Penelo shouted to be heard. Sirens and klaxons of all description began to scream and wail and the lights throughout the corridor flashed on and off maddeningly. A stream of dove grey clad Draklor employees began to pour out of laboratories and antechambers, herded by Imperial soldiers.

'Earthquake, miss,' Roger the hoplite captain who had been guiding them up to the seventieth floor, reacted instantly. 'We have to get out of here.'

'But what about Balthier?' Penelo pulled her arm out of the hoplite captain's solicitous grip. Vaan was already perched on tiptoes trying to see over the bobbing stream of heads as people filled out towards the emergency stairway. He was looking for the best route to take to cut through the current.

'Sir, miss, _please_,' Roger began a trifle desperately, 'There's not been a real quake in the capital for a century – Draklor wasn't built to withstand a big 'un.'

As if to prove the captain's point another roaring tremor rocked the tower followed along by a tremendous bang – an explosion above their heads. The lights went out and the klaxons were silenced mid-wail. Darkness, thick and terrifying, descended in an eyeblink. People began to scream.

'Fire! Fire!'

'Bollocks to buggery the intermediate coupling line's gone down; the glossair feeds compromised!'

'Get out of my ruddy way – we're all going to die. Get out of my way!'

'It's burning – it's all burning! Help, oh gods help me.'

'Penelo come on!' Vaan grabbed her arm and the two turned on their heels, running back the way they had come through the darkness. They were headed not for the fastest way out, but instead back towards the Strahl's dock.

'No wait – come back!' Roger yelled after them but did not follow.

Another tremor hit then, knocking their feet out from under them. Vaan went sprawling across the hard polished stone floor of the corridor. Penelo had the sheer good fortune to end up falling on top of Vaan and thus experienced a marginally softer landing. There was another crash and a noise that sounded like the largest kettle known to hume-kind whistling on the bowl.

'Vaan!' Instinct came to Vaan and Penelo's rescue then; in that split second between hearing that high-pressure hissing sound and the moment the liquid lance of super heated white hot flame smashed through the corridor wall from a ruptured power line right above their heads, Penelo threw up the strongest Shell shield she could muster and flung herself bodily over Vaan. The fluid wash of immense heat seared over their heads, missing incinerating them by scant inches.

'Whoa.' Vaan grabbed hold of Penelo and rolled both of them across the floor underneath that skin shrivelling jet of flame as it splayed over the opposing wall and spilled down onto the floor like a water hose. The two Rabanastran sky pirates scrabbled on hands and knees away from the flames encroaching across the corridor floor.

Another hissing shriek reached their ears, muffled by a thick bulkhead door beside them. Vaan wasted no time leaping to his feet and hauling Penelo up with him. 'Come on, run!'

As one the pair turned and bolted down the corridor. They had just reached the junction at the end of the corridor when the bulkhead door exploded outward. Claws of flame, like the tentacles of some monstrous sea creature, speared outward. Colours like fragments of a rainbow caught in the flames danced and flashed; green, red, violent purple.

'Gods, Vaan,' Penelo coughed, pressing her hand to her mouth, 'What if there were _people_ in that room?'

Vaan gritted his teeth as the atrocious sickly sweet scent of burning meat rolled forth down the corridor in a wash of black and noxious smoke.

'There were,' he said before tugging on Penelo's arm and dragging her away.

* * *

**And Yet More Ripples: Archades**

'Whomsoever is responsible for the design of this tower has much to answer for,' Balthier muttered as he hurried down the short flight of steps down from the large central chamber on the seventieth floor. 'All these bloody elevators are no help right now.'

'Kupo,' said Nono riding Balthier's shoulder.

'Bloop,' said Smith buzzing forward ahead of Balthier.

The initial tremors had faded and left in their wake a Draklor in total darkness. Balthier suspected that one of the main power generators, if not all of them, had been knocked out of commission by the earthquake. The seventieth floor was nothing to his senses but a void of smoke laden blackness. Smith's single red eye pierced that impenetrable wall of shadow like a bloody spear, but shed little in the way of practical illumination. The hiss and crackle of severed power conduits, loose wiring and burning components created a dissonant chorus within the web of inky darkness.

'Hmm, I don't suppose you remember where the emergency stair is, Nono old chap?'

'Emergency stair, kupo?' The small Moogle straddling his right shoulder and gripping on to his collar for purchase inched a bit closer, drawing one small paw away to rub at his quivering nose. 'A-choo!' The Moogle sneezed more or less directly into Balthier's ear.

'Bless you,' he muttered darkly waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of lighting and trying to orientate himself without the virtue of his most relied upon sense. 'Bugger it, what I would not give for Fran's nose about now.'

'Bl-ep, belllleep, b-eep, bloooppp,' said Smith and then from a tiny hatch on the top of the Rook's carapace a long antenna extended up and outward. Upon the antenna was a small concave dish which began to rotate at ninety degree angle from right to left. 'Bl-ep, b-eep, blooooppp.'

Balthier, who could not really see what Smith had done, nevertheless sensed that the Rook prototype had done something. He decided it was prudent to sidle a small step away from the contraption. Smith began to buzz hither and thither in the darkness, his red eyebeam striking out across the gloom and leaving ruby afterglow in the wake of his passage.

'Kupo-po – what's it doing, kupo?' Nono asked around another sneeze.

'Not a ruddy clue,' Balthier conceded fishing out his handkerchief from the inside confines of his vest via touch alone and handing it up to the sinus challenged Moogle without a word. 'Still following along seems preferable to waiting here for the aftershocks.'

'_Aftershocks?' _Nono squeaked just as another booming thunder knocked Balthier to the floor and shattered all the glass from the windows of the seventieth floor. There was a mournful metallic wrenching sound as the elevator cable broke and the elevator car crashed all the way down the shaft.

'Yes,' Balthier purred dryly as he rolled to his feet again, 'aftershocks.'

* * *

**Ripples fading outward:**

'She screams; Ivalice screams.' Fran stumbled, reaching out towards her ringing ears before dropping her hands.

'Are you hurt? What is wrong?' Ethain, young puppyish, reached out to support her and Fran instinctively shied from his touch. She lifted her head and looked up towards the sky as the first slight tremor shivered over the wild road through the Cerobi Steppes.

'The wind tastes of burning,' Fran said quietly, 'I taste ashes on the air. The ground trembles and the long grasses whisper of such upheaval my ears ring.'

'What do you mean?' Ethain could barely feel the tremble of the ground. 'What is this shaking feeling - an earthquake? Here?' he looked around wildly, but could see naught but the swaying grasses and the rising slopes of Cerobi. In the distance the lobos howled but this was normal.

'The ground shakes, I know not why.' Fran took a step forward and turned to the northwest. 'This upheaval is not meant for here. We feel but the ghost of Ivalice's pain.'

So far south she could not see the high ground or the spires of Archades but her thoughts and her other senses extended beyond the reach of sight alone. Her hand reached for the broken tear upon its cord around her neck. She curled her fingers around that token and closed her eyes.

Friction and the flash of lightning; Fran tasted rain and a phantom breath of air played over her spirit as gentle as a summer breeze. A fission of impetuous impatience, curiosity, vigour and intellect not native to Fran's own character bubbled through her. Fran almost smiled, she knew the feel of this soul; Balthier was well.

'What should we do?' Ethain asked quietly.

Fran opened her eyes and regarded the young hume, 'We must keep going. I hear the wind, and I heed the earth. It tells me our path.'

'But what if there are people hurt in this quake?' Ethain had been reluctant to move at any great pace towards the small enclave of the Viera Fantl had once called home, nestled within the wooded isle of Iona just off the north eastern Archadian coast. Fran had grown increasingly suspicious of his reticence but now she considered seriously the prospect that elsewhere calamity might have struck.

'If I should find those in need I shall aid them, but onwards I go.' She narrowed her eyes at the hume. 'You may do as you please hume, though trouble me it does to think you care not to return to Iona and give Fantl's tribe word of her passing.'

'I….' the hume flushed. He looked down at the ground, scuffing his old boots against the dirt road. 'I will accompany you.' He flicked his eyes upwards. 'It is only right.' He added but his words lacked conviction. Fran regarded him for a long still moment before nodding once and turning on her heel to travel onwards.

As she did so, however, Fran could not help but wonder if it was wise to turn her back on Ethain.

* * *

**Aftershocks: Archades**

'Well I'll be a Bangaa's uncle,' Balthier said some indeterminate time later when Smith had successfully navigated a course for them through the smoke clogged ancillary corridors to the emergency access stairwell, 'He's using sonar.' Balthier smiled. 'Now that's clever.'

'Kupo,' Nono grumbled sullenly, blowing his nose with the handkerchief, which could serve as a goodly sized shroud for the Moogle.

The stairway down from the seventieth floor was in good nick, but Balthier's self-evacuation hit a snag on the sixty-seventh floor.

'Bollocks!' A near solid wall of noxious smoke, curdled with enough heat to singe the skin, billowed up the stairs from below bringing with it the muted roar of a raging fire and the unmistakable stench of a glossair blaze. There would be no way down this way. Balthier tried the bulkhead door leading from the stairwell to the main floor but the blasted thing wouldn't open. The lock mechanism appeared fused closed.

'Well this isn't good,' Balthier pressed his forearm against his mouth and nose as the noxious fumes of the glossair fire began to seep into his lungs. He coughed, spat and squinted through the stinging smoke at the bulkhead door. Nono fashioned a mask of sorts for his face from Balthier's handkerchief and tried not to pass out from the fumes.

'Kupo-po – master Balthier, kupo, this is bad.'

'Hmm,' Balthier ran his fingers expertly over the deadened control console, 'There's a power relay on the sixty-sixth, must have been damaged in the quake.' He muttered as his fingertips propped the edges of the doorframe for any exploitable weaknesses in the design, 'I should imagine it knocked out the power to the bulkheads and the lights when it blew.'

Below them something loud went bang and the stairwell shuddered, there was a smattering of shattered glass, popping cables and another bulging wave of vile smoke rushed up the stairs from the sixty-sixth floor. Balthier coughed and clutched at his side, his wound screaming as his lungs revolted against the mouthfuls of toxins Balthier had already inhaled. Something needed to be done and sharpish for Balthier did not feel much like standing around here as he vomited up his own dissolving lungs.

'Smith?' Balthier braced himself with one hand against the wall beside the door. He wiped at his mouth and wheezed painfully.

'Bloop.'

'Blast the sodding door,' Balthier shuffled back a step or three until he was back on the stairs leading up to the sixty-eighth.

'B-looop.' There could be no question that this mechanised exclamation was somewhat wary, reluctant even. The red eyebeam hovered and fixed upon Balthier's brow with considerable reproach.

'K – kupo…..'

Nono wavered perched on Balthier's shoulder and slipped backwards. Balthier caught his diminutive crewman before the Moogle could fall down the stairwell into the flames below. He cradled the unconscious Moogle in the crook of his arm even as his own senses swooned and he dropped heavily onto his arse on the cold, hard steps. Eyes streaming and lungs screaming Balthier glared up at the Rook. 'Don't….don't give me that look….I know you still have weapons….._Blast the gods be damned door_ – now!'

'B-looooop!'

There was a whirring sound and then Smith hovered above the landing of the smoke filled stairwell facing the solid bulkhead door. The narrow beam of his red eye widened opening up into a pulsing swath about a foot wide. There was a sudden whiff of molten metal and a liquid popping sound much akin to fat melting on a feast day roast before Balthier was dazzled by a flash of brilliant red light.

'Blop,' said Smith the Rook a second later.

Balthier opened his eyes and then blinked. 'Bloody hell,' he whispered staring at the quickly solidifying stream of molten metal oozing over the landing; metal that once existed in the very solid form of the bulkhead door. The door itself was now no more than a memory. Balthier turned to Smith whose eyebeam was once more simply a thin beam of red light.

'Nice,' Balthier hauled himself up, breathing coming easier now that fresh and untainted air from the main floor could reach him. There was also some luminance along the corridor he could see with. Balthier glanced down at the wheezing Moogle in his arm and pursed his lips. 'Nice work Mister Smith.' It was as close to an exclamation of gratitude as Balthier ever gave anyone.

'Bloop,' said Smith, though it was impossible to know if it was appeased or not.

The Rook buzzed through the red hot doorway first and into the hall moving on ahead to scout for further dangers. Balthier stepped through a little more tentatively, very careful not to touch the glowing edges of the jagged former doorway. He glanced from the congealing slurry of melted metal on the floor to the small buzzing Rook a few feet ahead.

'Perhaps letting the silly thing dust is not so bad after all?' Balthier mused to himself, 'Better than incineration, that's for sure.'

Ahead at the junction of the corridor Smith had obviously found something. The Rook rotated around so that his red eye could blink in rapid succession with each 'bloop,' of urgency. Balthier hurried forward, trying to ignore the pain in his lungs and the ache of his knife wound. He didn't need to look down at himself to know that the stitches had reopened. He could feel the cold wetness of blood plastering his shirt to his stomach and seeping through the thick brocade of his vest.

Still Balthier was actually compelled to forget his own discomfit due to the sight that met him as he rounded the corner of the corridor. The ceiling of the corridor had partially collapsed in a shower of exposed energy cables and insulation. This was not a cause for concern however; rather it was the young woman half pinioned under a ceiling support beam that garnered a quick breath of concern from Balthier himself.

'Oh sod it,' Balthier all but growled.

The young woman, a stranger, looked up at him then. Her face was streaked in blood and dust so that it had become a caricature mask of white and crimson. Her brown hair, clipped into a cheerful upturned bob, was equally covered in a film of dust and insulation fluff. Her green eyes were large and bright with pain and encroaching shock. The girl managed a tremulous smile. Balthier frowned, he thought he recognised this girl as one of those omnipresent students always trailing at his heels while he tried to get some work done around Draklor.

'Hello Director Bunansa, sir,' said the girl. 'I'm glad to see you are not gravely injured.'

Balthier quirked an eyebrow, 'Quite,' he glanced over the girl, whose lower half appeared to be completely hidden under the rubble of the ceiling, as if she had tried to take a quick nap and used the ceiling as a quilt. 'And who might you be, pray tell?'

'Oh I'm Selphie,' the girl said. 'Selphie Gainsborough, daughter of Eammon Gainsborough Consul of Iona, and one day I shall be the greatest airship engineer Ivalice has ever known.' The girl smiled seemingly quite oblivious to her fate. 'I'm here to rescue you sir.'

It was then, just as it seemed impossible that the moment could grow any more awkward that one final, tremendous, aftershock rocked the entire tower to its roots. Balthier fell forward, almost on top of the pinioned girl and the ceiling, carrying with it most of what was left of the upper three floors, crashed down atop of them all.


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: I am so sorry everyone (if anyone is still around) that this has taken me so long to update. All I can say is Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins ate my brain. (Sigh) I am a bad person. ;(_

**Kerwon Mountains:**

The mountain was rubble and the rubble was mountainous; the clouds scudded over a sky rent with dust and flame. Ragnarok watched the dust settle and awaited the coming of the armies of Ivalice. In truth the great dragon pondered his awakening. The sky had yet to fall and the seas had yet to boil, but then again, it was not the way of the great beast to question his lot in existence all that much.

He was the great leveller, the arbitrator of ultimate judgement; he was the beginning and the end and truthfully he was a trifle bored. Ragnarok heaved a great, belaboured sigh only to be overcome with a distinct fission of embarrassment when that sigh ignited a half mile of evergreen forest on a nearby mountain slope. Ultimate judgement was all well and good but needless destruction was simply vandalism. Ragnarok had standards; he had principles.

Stifling another sigh (lest he set anything else on fire accidentally) the great dragon born of the womb of Ivalice herself, Ragnarok Child of Wrath, settled down to await the inevitable. Still, as there was a certain school of thought that believed Ragnarok himself was the totality of inevitability this created something of a conundrum; Ragnarok did not know why he had been summoned. This did not look like the end of the world to him. However as you only got the one end of the world and there were no dress rehearsals Ragnarok supposed his expectations might have been mistaken.

Coiling in the debris of the mountain and making a nest out of the spoils of a silent god's empty palace Ragnarok couldn't help being a bit put out. It would have been nice to have the sky cave in and the distant oceans writhe and boil – just for the look of the thing. Ah well, each to their own he supposed. Ragnarok waited and pondered. This End of the World lark was not at all what he had expected.

Quite the let down, in fact.

* * *

**Archades : Imperial Circle **

Emperor Larsa Ferrinas Solidor was, truth be told, a trifle miffed. He was also anxious, horrified and over-burdened with guilt, but this was a familiar state of affairs for the boy emperor and so barely needed stating. He was a Solidor; he had either to embrace guilt or megalomania. There was no in-between. Standing now in the centre of Imperial Circle under a beautifully flawless sky, and surrounded by a swirling mass of his citizenry caught within a cyclone of controlled panic, Larsa tugged on the Solidor crest pendant around his neck and voiced the only thought that seemed really pertinent.

'An Earthquake; how can this be?'

Of all the calamities he had weathered in his young life from friend and foe, blood and family alike, it seemed almost laughable that now Ivalice herself would turn her ire upon him and his Empire. Was it not enough that Larsa was daily reminded of the sins of his peoples past by those who were nominally his allies? Must he now face the slings and arrows of Mother Nature as well?

'I do not know your lordship.' Judge Magister Gabranth stood beside his young charge, both swords drawn and held loose in his hands. 'But this does indeed appear to be the work of an earthquake.' The exposure of their position and the possibility of an opportunistic assassin taking advantage of the general confusion of the mass evacuation to strike at Larsa had the magister on edge. Behind his helmet the man who still considered himself Basch Fon Ronsenberg, began to sweat. This calamity could not be natural of this he was certain. For the most part because Basch did not believe he could ever be that lucky. No, in some way or the another, he suspected this was yet another hume plot in the offing.

'We have yet to ascertain any causal factors for this quake your lordship, but word has been sent out to our consulates throughout the Empire to ascertain the breadth and reach of this quake.'

'Do we have casualty reports?' Larsa's brow scrunched. Presently the Imperial army and the Judiciary Guard seemed to have control of the situation within the high echelon of Imperial Circle; the tall towers of this most prestigious of locations continued to disgorge their occupants in an orderly fashion, co-ordinated by the soldiers. Yet what of the rest of his city?

'Too early to tell, my lord,' Gabranth who was yet Basch, shifted in his armour. 'Early reports indicate that Old Archades has suffered only minor structural damage and very minor injuries; we have soldiers and medics on hand in the alleys even now, but they are not truly needed for anything other than keeping the people calm.'

Larsa nodded, 'Good. That is good.' He thought swiftly. 'Our people should stay in the alleys unless an emergency elsewhere calls them away.' He said with calm certainty. 'If they are in need of something to do perhaps they could help the people assess damages to their homes?'

'Aye,' Basch forgot himself momentarily offering only the perfunctory, but still deferential, response he would have given as a Knight of Dalmasca and not the more verbose and obsequious reply his brother's rank demanded of him. Larsa did not notice as Larsa had little time for toadying at any rate. Instead the child ruler continued to watch the gathering flock of gentry milling about the central circle, a frown of consternation puckering his brow.

Basch cleared his throat, the sound reverberating behind his helmet. 'Reports indicate that the Vulgars seem……impressed by how swiftly help came to them from the main city, your lordship.'

'Good.' Larsa nodded once more. It was a good thing, not just because any loss of life was unacceptable on moral grounds, but because the vulgars had come to expect to be ignored in times of crisis; it was the social order of Archades. The weak stayed weak and the strong (or just lucky) jeered at and ignored them for it. That had been the way of Archades for decades – centuries even – but now, finally, the old ways were changing. Larsa knew it was wrong of him, but he could not help but consider the political leverage that could be wrought in proving that the Empire under his stewardship cared for all her citizenry equally. For a boy emperor always only a hairsbreadth away from the next assassin's dagger, or court intrigue gone bad, that sort of leverage was worth more than a battalion of judges. As soon as this chain of thought had coalesced in his mind Larsa was guilty. Now was not the time for politics. Now was not the time to think of reaping advantage from a natural disaster the toll of which in either life or property had yet to be tallied.

'And Tsenoble, Trant; what of the financial and industrial sectors of the city?' He asked to distract himself, abstracted gaze following the ebb and flow of gentry and bureaucrats being corralled like silk draped chocobos into holding formations well away from the buildings.

Gabranth who was not Gabranth recited from memory the most recent report he had received from one of the messengers dispatched from the battalions out in the city districts. 'We have been remarkably lucky; the gods and the fates have both smiled on Archades this day.' He began before getting to the meat of the issue. 'Tsenoble reports minimal damages; likewise for Grand Arcade. There was some damage to some of the newer houses in Highgarden Terrace but no reports of serious civilian casualty.' Basch's sudden wry smile was hidden by his brother's helm, 'The Fraternity of Kupo in Highgarden had already begun to organise a controlled evacuation when our troops arrived.'

Larsa fingered the shiny brass badge he wore on the lapel of his velvet coat thoughtfully. The emblem of two moogles in silhouette, pom-poms entwined, had been picked out in malachite against an obsidian background. Larsa had been sworn into the Fraternity as an honorary Moogle some months ago. This was apparently a high accolade only granted those humes of highest merit and Larsa had been quite touched.

'I would expect nothing less of the Fraternity, Judge Gabranth.' He said seriously.

'Indeed.' The Judge Magister cleared his throat, forcing his thoughts back on track. 'There are reports of damages in the Industrial sector…..among them Draklor.'

'Darklor?' That one word held a multitude of meanings and a fair bit of subtext.

So too did Basch's otherwise succinct reply. 'Yes, your lordship.'

Larsa immediately turned to look out at the horizon he could just see beyond the high climbing walls of the great towers of Imperial Circle. Here at the highest point of the city it was difficult to see beyond the stretching reach of the Senate building and his own residence to the rest of the city sweeping down towards the river below. All he could see in the general direction of the Industrial sector was a lazy trail of black smoke stroking the underbelly of the clear blue sky.

'Faram preserve us,' Larsa breathed his hidden devotion escaping in a moment of stomach sinking dread. 'She's aflame; Draklor burns.'

And unspoken but most definitely heard in the subtext was another question: What in the name of all that was holy had Balthier done now?

* * *

**Draklor Laboratory **

It took awhile but finally Balthier managed to dig himself out of the wreckage of the fallen ceiling. Dust clogged his nose and painted his lips while his eyes streamed as sudden brightness accosted his optic nerves without warning. Standing would prove counter-productive, therefore he remained low to the floor. The floor being a relative term, as the actual stone of the corridor was well hidden under a mish-mash of ceiling plaster and sundry debris.

'Well there is another fine shirt ruined, I'll wager.' He coughed wetly; dust and blood thick and rank on his tongue.

The first thing he noticed once his eyes stopped streaming happened to be the surfeit of sunlight striking down through the holes in the ceiling and, interestingly, the gaping wound in the outer wall of the sixty-eighth floor. That could not be good. Balthier knew very little about structural integrity in terms of stationary architecture (truthfully structural integrity in terms of airships was not his strong suit either – that was Fran's job. He was an engine and wiring man) nevertheless great gaping holes in any building could not be a good thing.

Well, bugger. He really wasn't in the mood for this sort of nonsense.

In his arms the unconscious girl in the Draklor intern uniform moaned softly and recalled Balthier to the most pressing priorities. Right then; it was time to take stock. Time to take affirmative action; time to get the bloody hell out of here before the whole ruddy pile collapsed down on his head.

'Ooooooohh.' The girl in his arms stirred. Big green eyes blinked open. The chipper girl he had almost tripped over in the corridor before the collapse stared up at him blearily. Balthier knew the girl had given him her name but he couldn't remember it.

'Ooh.' In disjointed fashion the girl tried to move only to realise her present position. 'Uh. Hello Director Bunansa. Erm, why am I in your lap?' Under the thick patina of chalky dust the girl's skin glowed like a rose and her eyes darted away from his face nervously. It brought a smile to Balthier's lips; maidenly embarrassment had always amused him.

'Because my dear I have just dragged you out from under the ceiling, which incidentally, is now the floor.'

'Oh.' The girl, Sophie or Sally or something like that, seemed to consider this for a moment. 'Well as long as there is a good reason.' She said chipperly. 'I'd hate to inconvenience you director.'

Balthier blinked at the girl for a long moment. Why was it that almost everybody he met in his day to day life appeared to be a trifle odd? 'Quite.' He gathered his thoughts. 'What did you say your name was?'

'Selphie sir; Selphie Gainsborough. Second year aeronautical engineering intern, sir,' She tried to salute him but didn't get further than a twitch before her breath caught in a gasp of pain. Balthier winced. Hm, perhaps he should have warned her against moving before now?

'Yes, about that.' He tried to hold the girl steady without hurting her further. 'I wouldn't move over much if I were you. Broken collarbone I'm afraid.' Possibly not helped by the less than delicate means Balthier had had to employ to haul her out of the rubble but, bugger it, these things could not be helped.

'Oh,' the girl breathed in shakily, swallowing around another surge of pain as she became completely acquainted with her body's numerous injuries. Balthier recognised the look in her very wide eyes only too well. How many times had he woken up in similar circumstances to this only to vehemently long for unconsciousness once more? Too bloody many to count. 'Oh.' The girl repeated again, going very pale under all the dust and grime. 'That would explain the pain then.' She whispered.

'Hmm,' Balthier peered through the hole that had appeared in the outer wall of the tower. Almost offensively bright sunlight streamed through that hole, lighting on the floating motes of dust and plaster in a rather fetching manner. He could hear the distant din of a tremendous commotion outside and beyond the tower. He could also see a rising vale of black and choking smoke, presumably rising from similar massive holes in the building from the lower floors. Lower floors that, one had to assume, happened to be ablaze.

Not good. Not ruddy good at all.

'Nice weather today isn't it?'

Balthier startled, looking back down at the girl lying unnaturally still in his arms. 'Pardon?' He felt sure he had just misheard her. After all, even had his own debonair and inane best, Balthier would not have had the gall to start commenting on the weather if he was in the girl's shoes.

The girl in question managed a faint, ever so slightly desperate smile. 'Quite unseasonably warm, wouldn't you say?'

Well, what a turn up for the books. Despite himself Balthier was impressed by this girl's sheer foolhardy lack of concern for her own predicament. He wondered if she had pirate in her blood. The consul of Iona was a rough sort of place, or so he remembered from his last sojourn to the purvama. A smirk twitched his lips.

'Hmm, quite pleasant indeed; particularly with all the new ventilation,' Balthier flapped a hand towards the big hole in the wall. The girl, Selphie, grinned wanly at him, valiantly trying to ignore her pain. Nevertheless as amusing as it would be to ignore their predicament Balthier supposed he really should take the initiative his new rank and responsibility as director demanded and think of a way out of here.

'What I would not give to have my ship back now.'

Balthier sighed and rubbed at an irritating throb emanating from the back of his skull. He came away with dusty blood on his fingers; marvellous, just bloody marvellous. He probed the tender protrusion under his blood matted hair with delicate fingers. Something must have clipped him across the back of the head when the ceiling came down. That would explain his wandering attention span, then.

Truly he was getting mightily sick of this foolishness; he had long since grown out of his infatuation with death defying daring.

'Director?' Selphie's tremulous voice snapped his wavering attention back where it ought not to have wandered from. Balthier sighed deeply. His choices were minimal. Both ends of the corridor had collapsed and he dared not move for fear that portions of the floor might give way beneath him. He rather suspected that the whole upper section of Draklor tower would soon cave in completely.

'I can't carry you.' Balthier said quietly narrowing his eyes as he stared at the clear blue sky visible where a two foot thick wall used to be, 'and unless you and I develop the miraculous ability to grow wings I somewhat doubt we shall be leaving this floor anytime soon.'

The girl in his arms didn't actually say much of anything in response to this less than optimistic summation of reality. Balthier cast a cursory glance down at her to make sure she still breathed. Evidently the girl had decided that unconsciousness was the better part of valour after all. Her face was slack in repose and very young seeming. Balthier could not in truth say he blamed her for choosing not to face her fate with eyes wide open. Today was not shaping up to be one of his better days either.

'Miss Gainsborough now is hardly the time for idleness,' gently he patted the girl's cheeks until her eyes fluttered open languidly. 'I might not be able to carry you, and we may well be trapped here until the bloody tower collapses, but I expect a certain level of lucidity from my students all the same.' Not that he had ever bothered to _teach _any of them, that is. Still now was not the time for pointless guilt. He snapped his fingers in front of the dazed girl's face and peered down at her, affecting the look of haughty annoyance he had perfected on Vaan years ago. 'Is that understood, miss Gainsborough.'

Selphie blinked at him, 'You remembered my name?'

Balthier arched a brow, 'You thought I wouldn't?' The girl opened her mouth to reply but Balthier waved her to silence. 'Hold tight now, my girl. This will hurt.'

Ribs protested loudly and vociferously as Balthier gritted his teeth against a small jolt of regret for the pain he was about to cause the unfortunate girl. Still it had to be done so, ignoring her gasp of pain, he half-dragged and half-finessed the girl out from the confining blankets of rubble attempting to entomb them both and propped her up against a nearby solid wall. Selphie Gainsborough did her best not to scream.

'Shh,' Balthier warded the girl to silence with a finger to her lips before she could start thrashing about and hyperventilating. 'Enough of that,' Balthier's own blood painted the inside of his vest and stung his skin with damp ice as it congealed; the stitches in his knife wound having sheared apart at some point. 'I have little time for whiners and wastrels, Miss Gainsborough. One does not become an engineer by fainting at the first hint of ones imminent demise, after all.' Balthier did his best not to think about the bump on his head and his mounting blood loss, or on what would happen to either them if _he_ should faint. The girl stared at him with huge eyes, tears prickling at her lashes. The look in those eyes however was somewhat disturbing; devotion seemed too meek a word.

'Yes sir, director Bunansa, sir!'

'Right, yes.' Balthier carefully inched his way over the shifting mounds of rubble towards the huge hole in the wall. He could feel things moving against the confines of his vest, things that should not be rubbing against brocade at any time. Bile seared up his throat and a wave of dizziness ate at his vision. As many times as Balthier had cheated death and escaped the most impossible of dire circumstances, he well knew that one only needed to trip up once and it was all over. He'd died once already. He didn't think he'd be able to escape death's icy clutches for a second time. Gritting his teeth he kept belly crawling across the shifting mounds of rubble.

'Did I hear you say you were from Iona, hm?' He called to the girl as he spotted something soft and incongruously orange poking out of a small mould of debris like a flower in the midst of rather peculiar soil. He started shovelling away the wreckage with his bloody hands.

'I –yes. Iona. My father is consul there.' The girl hesitated, her silence speaking volumes, as underneath Balthier's quick moving hands a small body stood revealed like a pea popped from a pod.

'Nono?' Scooping the little body up in his arms Balthier resisted the urge to shake his crewmen. Come on old stick, this is poor show.

Ku……..po…..' Very slowly the groggy Moogle quivered into life. Balthier released an explosive breath of relief. Nono blinked his big, liquid black eyes open and blearily surveyed the situation. 'Oh bloody kupo.' He exclaimed, and really, what more could be said than that?

'Smith?' Balthier looked up and around him through the thick hanging curtain of sunlight stained dust. There was a very large part of him busily chastising the rest of him in his head for failing to seek out his crewmen until now.

'Bloop.' There was a small explosion amid the rubble and smith erupted up in a shower of dust. He buzzed, unharmed, over to Balthier.

'Ah jolly good,' Balthier nodded rather woodenly, 'Glad to see you are in one piece, Smith.'

'Bl-blop.' The one red eye of the Rook skimmed over the debris with an almost critical slant. Balthier found himself holding his breath, almost hoping that the mechanised contraption would manifest some miraculous means of escape from within its tiny cylindrical frame. Stranger things had happened after all and Balthier was rather in the mood to be rescued and not rescuer right now. In fact had the fate of all things been in his hands Balthier rather thought he would sooner be almost anywhere than here right now. Sitting by a nice open fire with a large brandy or three would be one of his preferred options.

'Smith, keep Miss Gainsborough company.' Balthier did not like the sound of his own voice; detached and somewhat breathy. He suspected he did not have all that long before unconsciousness claimed him.

'Blop.' Dutifully the Rook buzzed over to the wounded girl, who wavered in and out of unconsciousness, head bobbing on the stalk of her neck.

Balthier, with Nono perched woozily on his back started inching towards the hole in the wall on his belly once more. He wanted to see how the rest of the city fared. If the whole of Archades was a nothing more than a burned out ruin then Balthier supposed he'd have to rescue himself. If not, well, then perhaps help was already on its way.

Hm, yes and he was the next queen of Dalmasca. Balthier had never had much time for foolish optimism. It had been his experience that luck favoured those who helped themselves. Alas Balthier rather doubted he had it in him right now to do much of anything but keel over and die.

Still as much as it could be argued that the fates played ducks and drakes with Balthier's wellbeing on an almost weekly basis, there was a certain truth in the notion that he also had the most extraordinary luck known to humekind as well. Therefore, to a certain slanted perception, it could be said that had Balthier not been suffering from a mild concussion and a nasty case of ruptured innards from the injuries he had previously received from the Kiltia assassin mere days prior, then Balthier would have been a damn sight quicker getting to the hole in the wall – and _had_ he been any quicker getting to the hole in the wall, he would almost certainly have been instantly killed by the out of control prototype sky cab that just so happened to come careening through the wall at that very moment.

'Oh this is just ruddy marvellous.'

Balthier dropped as flat as he could, nose first into the rubble, hauling Nono down underneath him automatically and shielding his moogle crewman with his body as the new model sky cab Balthier himself had designed, and which had been locked up in one of the hangars the last time Balthier looked, veered past him and sailed straight over the moulds of rubble headed towards the far wall. Of course the far wall just so happened to be, as his jaded luck would have it, where Smith hovered protectively in front of the immobile Selphie Gainsborough.

Selphie Gainsborough opened her green eyes wide and her mouth even wider upon an ear bursting scream. Smith opened the shutter of his laser eye and the burning red point glowed like the dawn of destruction. The sky cab's reverse thrusters roared to life and once again Balthier was in motion before he could think. This time he threw himself into a roll, clutching Nono to his chest as he frantically tried to get out of the way of the blazing hot exhaust stream before he and Nono were reduced to so many red hot cinders. He ended up rolling down the sloping rubble, under the belly of the cab, towards Smith and Selphie. And all of this happened just in time for Balthier to face the likelihood of being crushed by the runaway sky cab right alongside the rook and the girl.

Such was the life of Balthier Bunansa.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Hello all, this chapter is sort of an interlude of sorts. Fran has taken a bit of a back seat recently and there is some Viera back story that needs to be highlighted for this story to make sense, so here it is, a Fran chappie. _

* * *

**Twenty Miles off the Coast of Iona**

Fran was seventy-five years old. This was not a fact well known and one never spoken of but now, sitting at the prow of the ferry boat Meridian on course for the isle of Iona and the Viera enclave once home to Fantl, Fran found herself pondering her own life. Seventy-five was not a great age by the standards of her people; the Viera could expect to outstrip a humes life expectancy by double. Fran suspected she herself had a good five decades of life and vitality left to her. This was convenient as kind fates and benevolent deities willing, Fran knew that Balthier's hume lifespan would more or less correspond.

(Of course Balthier was such that every year she managed to keep him from killing himself through one misadventure or another was a year snatched from the very jaws of inevitability. Fran had secretly made it her design to ensure Balthier lived to see thirty; she hoped he might settle down a little after this point – most hume males appeared to do so, after all.)

Nevertheless here and now, with the ocean spray curling her hair as it whipped about her head like a pennant, Fran realised she had come to a crossroads of sorts. Five decades to consider in the future had she, to match five decades among the humes to reflect upon in the past. Watching the cobalt waters split apart as the ferry boat sliced through the ocean Fran wondered at the realisation that she had spent more years amid the humes and the other races of Ivalice than she had her own people. Therefore, truly, who were her people? The Viera whose form she still wore? Or the varied denizens of Ivalice she had met over the years? Was she kin to a people whose values she had run from, or was she kin to the men and women whom had shed blood with her, wept tears for her, and given her a place within the tapestry of their lives? Intellectually Fran had accepted long hence that her spirit and her mind had become tempered, altered, by the ways of Ivalice and in her heart she had recognised that losing the ear of the Wood was less a reflection of the Wood's rejection as it was her own rejection of the Wood. All the same she had wandered Ivalice for fifty years more or less untouched by the power struggles and the constant striving of the other races; why was it only in the last handful of years that her stance had changed?

(Was it merely that she had needed the solitude, that wilderness time wherein she had wandered and become Fran, in order to prepare her for the life she now led? Was it possible that her wandering had been a form of conception period, wherein Viera became Fran? Interesting to think so.)

Just as the leaf blown free of the branch does not have a hand in where it eventually falls, neither had Fran believed she could lay hands upon her own destiny and plot her own course. In truth she had not believed for many long years that she had a wish to do so, for was she not here in the hume lands as a self imposed punishment?

(So foolish and proud she had been in her youth. A child blundering upon the paths of men, sometimes Fran wondered how she had survived. She thought of Fantl, and wondered why it was that she had not survived.)

Fran shivered. Memory did not dull with age, nor did time blunt the edges of tragedy; in vivid colour Fran saw the green light of the Path of Verdant Praise in her mind's eye. The scent of loam and wood rot clung to the back of her throat even here amid the sharp salt of the ocean as her mind retreated to the past and to the hume who had shattered a young Wood warders mind.

_Please……we are refugees fleeing war. All we ask is safe passage to speed our way through your realm. _Unshaven and reeking of sweat and desperation the hume male had stood at the head of a clump of hume flotsam tossed loose from one senseless hume storm or another into the sanctuary of the jungle. The child Fran had been noticed that the hands he held out, beseeching, pleading, were dark with dried blood and dirt. _Please, I beg of you, there are children with us. Have you no mercy? _

_The Wood does not want you hume. _Arrow notched and bow held with perfect ease Fran had felt powerful and resolute with the outrage of the Wood whispering in her ears and the path to Eruyt hidden from prying eyes at her back. _Leave this place hume. No aid will you find here. _

The hume had stared at her, long face slick with sweat, eyes sunken and dark hair riddled with lice, grease and filth. Behind his back one of the hume young wailed, a sickly stuttering sound and a girl barely grown jostled the babe on her hip, whispering soothing nothings to the infant even as her own voice rasped with sickness and starvation.

_Leave or die, _the Wood's most favoured warder had demanded of these wretched humes and slowly, like revenants of death yet to come, they shuffled off the path into the dark and unforgiving shadows of Golmore's twisted reaches. For the longest time Fran had stood there, guarding the secret path to her village, and listened to the humes stumbling footfalls, the scent of their fear polluting the air she breathed.

(In Golmore there was no concept of guilt; the winter did not feel guilt as the frost ate away the fallen summer, and nor did the Viera know such sentiment. Fran did not let guilt shame her into inaction, but never would she regret that shame was a condition she knew well. She was not a season, not a skulking predator, at luxury to feel naught but her own satisfaction – and never would she be again.)

_Have you no mercy? _Across the rippling veldt of the ocean a breeze, laden with the bite of brine, took wing off the surf and wrapped damp and clinging fingers around Fran's shoulders. She shivered but it was not truly cold that brought such chill to her bones. Absently her own hand reached up to clasp the shattered tear she wore around her neck. Fifty years she had wandered the lands of humes, cut adrift upon their tempestuous tides, and still she wondered, was this penance enough for what she had done, all those years ago, or rather, for what she had failed to do?

_You again? _The spectre of Fran's guilt spoke clearly in her memory as thought descended to that long ago time. _Have you come to rout us, Viera? _Tears of impudent rage had streaked clear silver through the mask of grime and beard stubble that had so swallowed the hume man's sallow face. _I assure you, lady, we do not tarry in this god's forsaken jungle by choice._

The Warder, following Wood's path but heeding to a rather alien curiosity, stood before the small gathering of hume intruders and peered over the leader's shoulder to the shallow pit the humes had dug up just off the path. What manner of petty spite was this, that they would tear open the forest paths - and what was that bundle, wrapped in filth caked rags the humes sought to drop into the hole?

_What do you think to do here? _She who was not truly Fran had asked and the hume man's face had twisted, something dark beyond the darkest shadow of Golmore's most hidden paths flashed across his face.

_A burial, _the hume had told her. _We seek to bury our dead. Is that such a crime?_

_Yes, _had the Wood's dear daughter spoken, _Golmore has no want for your flesh and bones, humes. You dishonour our home with your dead. Begone and take your fallen with you. _

Coldly had the Viera watched as the woman-child hume she had seen before, the one who had quieted the infant, collapsed to her knees before the fresh dug hole. The Viera could smell the sickness, the promise of death, clinging to her emaciated limbs. She could see broken madness and yawning emptiness in those wild and rolling eyes. For the first time the cold and selfish Viera noticed that the bundle in the shallow dug grave was very small, even for humes.

_Hush little baby, _the hume womanling began to keen like a couerl in its death throes, _hush little baby. Mummy will be with you soon, poppet. I promise. I promise my beauty. I will be with you soon. _

Tears redolent of salt and sorrow had fallen to stain the green blades of jungle fronds and the cold Viera had unlimbered her bow and notched another arrow, plucking the string as deft as a spider gliding over a web. The arrow had lodged into the overturned soil edging the shallow grave right beside the keening hume woman's head.

_Leave or die, _said the Wood and the Viera both and they had watched as the hume man had dragged the screaming woman away from the open grave. Viera knew nothing of love or hate, and thus the Viera warder could not know the burning loathing within the shadowed eyes of the hume man for what it truly was.

(But Fran knew it in her memory and she knew herself to be what that hume man had called her, as he stumbled off into the doom of Golmore: _monster._)

A squawking pack of gulls wheeled over head, marking the path of the Meridian from above and the tang of brine and salt sang songs of ancient depths and hidden worlds deep beneath the grey and frothing surf. The waters of the oceans were older even than the shores; the seaweed came from roots many thousands of years older than Golmore this Fran knew this, for the waves told her as they reached up to caress the sides of the ferry boat.

All lives were as fishes in the sea, coming and going without much notice in the vast and endless expanses of the ocean. Yet Fran had never forgotten that one hume child. She had never forgotten that it had been she, the callow child she had once been, who had shooed the grieving humes away so that she could dig up that shallow grave and tear the dead infant from Golmore's soil, lest the child's poor flesh despoil the Wood's purity.

(These crimes she would never speak of, these crimes she would never forget. What was piracy in comparison, save the affectation of silly children?)

_Come again, madam? You are the very figure of death come to taunt us, it seems. _When she who would one day become Fran had returned, for the third and final time, to stand in judgement over the hume trespassers under Golmore's canopy she had found their number greatly diminished. The creatures of Golmore's darkling paths had been gorging themselves on a banquet of hume flesh for the last several days; Fran had found the bones. The leader of these hapless, wretched creatures, he who had led them to their deaths in these dark and sunless jungle paths, was now succumbing to sickness, to grief's ravages, and to despair. When the Viera child had looked into his eyes she had seen a dead man walking.

_You will soon die, _she had told him as she regarded the last scattering of his compeers lying on the hard packed soil and rock of the forest path, many of them willing themselves into death's embrace even as they lay staring up at a blind and canopied sky.

The hume had laughed, a harsh, gasping sound. _And when we do you shall creep from your borrow and dig up our corpses, shall you not Viera? You shall scatter our bones amid your beasts. _When she had stared at him in shock the dying man had smiled, almost kindly. _It is strange, madam, that I should find perverse comfort in your presence. _The man gestured limply towards what was left of his people. _We fled from a war that would have seen us dead in ditches, stripped of the very shirts off our backs and all of value we have ever owned. I had hoped to lead my family, my friends, to salvation through this jungle._ Once again the man had laughed a soft, defeated sound. His lips had quirked in wry acknowledgement of his profound failure._ This was not quite what I had in mind._

_You will find no salvation here hume, _the Wood warder spoke the words of Golmore as if they were her own, but then, she had no voice of her own back then. _You were dead as soon as you trespassed upon this place._ The hume had laughed once again, laughing in the face of his own demise.

_Perhaps, perhaps not, _the hume's smile was quicksilver. _Still I once feared an anonymous death with no one to attend my corpse. _The man had shrugged casually, dismissing the burdens of life now he could do nothing to change his fate. _No fear of that now is there, dear Viera? Not with you around to attend me in the hereafter. _

_(_And the man had smiled at her then, for the last time in bitter forgiveness, and Fran would ever and always see the ghost of that smile every time Balthier would turn to her, toss his head, flash his lips and purr softly: _Well dear Fran, what do you say?_ There are many different types of penance, after all.)

_I am not here for your gain hume. _The Viera child, ignorant of what it meant to truly live, ignorant of pain, of choice, of all the things that give life meaning, had left then, swift of foot, quick of temper. Yet keen ears had heard the soft and mocking music of a dead man's laughter long after she had left that pitiful encampment behind.

Two days later driven by an impulse alien to the Wood and the Way, that fool child had returned, like a coward in the deep night, to find only corpses. She had stood for hours above the cold body of the hume male who had laughed at her, pleaded with her, and finally forgiven her. She had watched the reflected trails of fireflies dancing within the clouded prisms of his dead eyes. In that night watching death, the Wood's favoured daughter had discovered something far, far more sinister than simple tragedy. She had discovered doubt and the birth of the questions that would drive the Wood's good daughter from her cloistered cradle forever.

(Fran had buried the hume man's picked clean bones one night in secret where the Viera lay their fallen sisters and she had vanished from Golmore's embrace before the fresh turned soil had settled. She could not linger under Golmore's canopy knowing that she had been both cruel and without mercy and that the Wood, her mother, did not care.)

In the year 708 O.V. the gulls continued to serenade her with their raucous chorus and the sea's song of ageless wisdom still murmured in her ears, yet Fran's spirit was elsewhere, deep within memory's twisted branches. Bodiless she travelled paths within her thoughts long left all but forgotten. Now however she felt it necessary to remember; somehow Fran knew that she would soon be called to account for her actions. She would need to learn the moral of her own tale, for fear she did that soon others would need to learn from it.

(Lente invoked and a Viera dead with child; a miracle and a warning these matters foretold something darker than Fran knew, but she feared it greatly.)

The day, long ago, that Fran had seen the great shadow of a galleon airship obliterate the sun over her head and cast an entire valley into dappled shade she had believed she saw monsters and the end of all. She had screamed and grasped her own ears in fright. She had run blindly and wept for the loss of a green canopy over her head. Still she had not fallen along the path and had eventually found other wandering Viera. These sisters, equally lost, but at least resigned to the fact had told her simply what her Golmore mind could not readily accept. They told her of the humes and that these great beasts of sky and metal she saw carving up the horizon were not horrors and heralds of doom, but merely the tinkering of the humes who would dare tame the sky as they sought to tame the soil, and the mountains, the rivers, and the streams.

'But how?' Fran had asked. 'Are the humes not poor beasts without Way or Wood? How can they make sky their steed and ride her so?'

The older, wiser, jaded exiles that had taken Fran under their wing so far from Wood and Way had merely smiled and shook their heads. 'It is true that humes start with nothing; weakest and most needy of all the races they are, born to blood and ignorance, but that, poor lost sister, is their strength just as it is their burden.'

'I do not understand,' the child Fran had once been had said unable to tear her eyes from the horrible and magnificent flying machines.

'This we know,' the elder Viera had said, 'For we do not understand either, and that sister, is our burden. For was it not Lente, mother of us all, who said that the Viera were granted only answers but never questions?'

'But I have questions.' Fran had argued. 'I have many questions.'

The elder Viera had smiled with weeping eyes, 'Yes sister, and thus it is so, and you are Viera no longer.'

In the hume demesne of Antierre, beside the ocean and the rolling vineyard hills of the Rozzarian heartland Fran first set foot within the hollow heart of an airship. Mist and metal burned her nose and made her head reel and she had hidden in a storage locker and wept throughout the journey terrified that her feet were no longer rooted to the ground, yet something within that alien strangeness had called to her even then. Fran had met the flesh and steel of her fears and now she must master it. At first she could find employment only to sweep the floors of the aerodrome, drifting under the careless feet of the humes sweeping away their filth, but Fran had nothing if not time on her hands, and slowly, her patience lead her, like a meandering stream, towards the maintenance bays.

It was a Seeq by the name of Robard who first pushed a wrench into her hand and told her to: 'Quit staring bunny-girl and make yourself useful, eh?' A gruff man with little time or kindness for anything that was not wrought of glossair and steel, Robard had nevertheless taught Fran much. When he had succumbed to plague it was to Fran he had looked to continue his work.

'You don't talk much but you've got a good head on your shoulders, plus you've got the touch, you can feel the pulse in the engine better than most.' Those had been his dying words as the sickness took him before Fran could ask him what he meant.

Still Fran had realised eventually that the engineer's tools and the wayfarer's bow created their own camouflage and Fran found a place within Ivalice without ever truly becoming part of the pulse of life. She earned her bread for many years with a band of roaming mercenaries, selling her bow or her sword arm to the highest bidder in one vicious skirmish or another, and when war gave way to brief respites of peace Fran always returned to her engines. She found then that Robard had been right; she understood engines far more succinctly than she did other beings of flesh and blood. Thus for five decades Fran hid among the humes, not quite living, not quite dying. Until scant five years ago she had discovered what it truly meant to live.

(And to want; ambition simple but strange lurked within Fran's soul, kindled like flame. Fran now looked on tomorrow with a mind to claim the dawn. Her penance was over, her life scant begun.)

Before Fran now the island of Iona rose on the horizon, interrupting the perfect harmony of sea and sky. Green and verdant the island rose in gentle gradient; hills and valleys sloped towards small and clustered towns and upon bobbing waters quaint fishing schooners stood moored in harbour. Briefly Fran considered rising to find the hume Ethain, and equally briefly she pondered what secrets he harboured and what coward's shame had made him so reluctant to return with her to his lover's home.

Yet as Fran rose and walked over to the rail of the boat, clasping that solid metal in her two hands, Fran thought not on the immediate concerns of the moment. Instead she thought of the Viera of her childhood, she thought of the spite of Golmore, and the terrifying fear that poisoned the lives of every Viera; the fear of extinction and the fear of a salvation only to be found amid the enemy. For an answer can only prosper so long as there is a question. Viera were born to be an answer but they had given up the search for the question long ago. That was the doom of all Viera; so too was this ever more Lente's burden and her legacy, for it was she who had made it so.

'This burden I shall not carry, mother. How many of my sisters have you so cowed, as Fantl was so cowed, because of your broken heart, I wonder?'

Hand rising to clasp the tear around her neck Fran's keen eyes scored the horizon, her ears alert to every whisper or surf and shore, sky and tree. Yet it was to another that she spoke.

'I will be free, this I swear. I will be free of this burden.'

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_A/N: To Aozora: This chapter is dedicated to you as your timely, and lovely, review made me feel better when I was feeling blue ;)_


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Hello everyone; Firstly a big hello to Francesca – thanks for the review ;) And another hello to Aozora – hope you are feeling better – and now to an apology. This chapter is a little bit of a cop-out. It has gone through multiple re-writes mostly because I felt decidedly uncomfortable writing my usual heavy description of disasters after the recent tragedies to strike both Haiti and Chile. Stories should be escapism, exciting, but ultimately removed from reality. While I know nothing I could ever write would touch upon the disaster to befall those two countries, I do not want to belittle such things even inadvertently, in my stories. So I decided to change the direction of this story a little. The major plot won't change. I am just choosing not to dwell too much on the Draklor rescue. I apologise if this makes the chapter less than it should be, and thought I owed anybody reading an explanation. _

_Now then, on with the show……_

* * *

**Draklor: Upper Tower Floors – Not now but not that long ago **

Eirik Bjorndagen had a very bad feeling about all this. The fourth son of the ambassador for the Hinterland in Archades Eirik had never really been the sort to promote his own interests, or offer an opinion. He was happy to follow most often, but right now he was beginning to suspect following was not such a wise course of action. Byron's idea was pure madness. There was no other way to describe it. Yes, Eirik was all in favour of going to the rescue of Director Bunansa, very much so, but surely when one is engaged in a perilous rescue situation one should employ a certain amount of caution? Dead men do not make good rescuers after all, and if they were not very careful Byron's plan was going to get them all killed.

'But the prototype is not stable!' Abetunde Lethwaito-Umbiowe, prince of the Pessia lands, and generally known to his fellow Draklor students as Abe, was currently in the process of trying to dissuade Byron from this newest and most ill-advised notion.

'You heard the Director and Mistress Fran; even _he_ did not know what affect the new Sunstone engine would have on the flight and handling capacities of the craft! You could kill us all!'

'Or we could be the ones to single-handedly rescue the Director, and gain Empire wide recognition for our ingenuity and bravery!' Byron Kendell Massey the third turned around to glower daggers at the tall, ebon skilled prince of Pessia. Short, slightly dumpy and fussily dressed in too much embroidered fabric for his short stature to take, Byron should have been the one to be intimidated. Alas the Archades born shipping magnate's son had never lacked for verve or confidence. 'Good gods man! Think of the opportunity. Bunansa will be forced to acknowledge us if we are the ones to save his life.'

'This isn't an opportunity you dolt,' Selphie Gainsborough, the only female in their mismatched cohort, stepped up and whacked Byron around the back of the head. 'This is a bloody disaster, not a chance for social climbing. The Director could be dead for all we know!'

Instantly a heavy silence descended on their group. All of them were in awe of Director Bunansa, a man who wore his legend with ill-tempered but indisputable élan. That each of their cohort remained completely unknown to the man who could make their careers with a few kind words of praise, was perhaps the greatest source of distress any of the four privileged young people had ever known. All the same as the silence progressed Eirik became uncomfortably aware of the groaning creaks and masonry growls rumbling through the building. It was a very visceral reminder that they were standing in a building that had just been hit by an earthquake, which in itself was hardly an ideal place to be.

'Whatever we are going to do, we should do it quick.' Eirik was not the only one surprised to find that it was he who had spoken so succinctly.

'Right,' Byron seized once more upon the opportunity to take command. 'Selphie, you're the most nimble, and you know the upper floors best. You go scout out the upper tower, see if you can find the Director – and if the stairs are even useable.'

The Ionian frowned suspiciously; she and Byron were always locked in a barely amiable battle for supremacy. 'What are you going to do?'

'We'll wait here, of course.' Bryon spoke as if oblivious to the fact that parts of the building were on fire. 'This hangar seems secure for now. If you're not back in a half hour me, Abe, and Eirik will take the proto-cab and fly straight for the top of the tower to find you and the Director.' Byron beamed at Selphie, managing to appear both smug and enthusiastic. 'I've got the utmost confidence in you, Selph, I know you'll have the Director in tow by the time we've got this girl flying,' he slapped the outer shell of the Director's new toy. Byron's smile grew even wider in the face of Selphie's wavering suspicion. 'We'll just be the transportation; you'll be the real hero.'

'Well,' the girl hesitated but it was clear the idea had appeal; each one of the cohort would gladly chew off a finger or two for an opportunity to speak with the Director one to one. Selphie glanced almost eagerly towards the door to the hangar. 'Maybe you have a point…..'

Eirik shook his head; while it was true that he harboured dreams of having his skills recognised by the director he at least knew they were just that. He knew that he would never take a ride in the Strahl, or have the opportunity to walk in stride beside the great Bunansa. Alas Selphie and Byron did not occupy the same reality he did. As he watched Selphie dash off with the intention of climbing into danger instead of down to safety, Eirik's bad feelings only grew. Yes indeed, he had a very bad feeling about this whole venture. It was simply staggering how the very best of intentions could produce such stunningly stupid results – especially where the cohort were involved.

* * *

**Draklor: The Evacuation **

Researchers, physicians, healers, infantrymen and Nabradian patients milled around in a somewhat dazed stupor in the wide open spaces of Grand Arcade. Efficient nurses buzzed from one group of stretcher beds to another administering to their charges with the same professionalism and unruffled calm they had always employed while inside the corridors of Draklor. The recently re-installed Draklor guard contingent did their level best to maintain some semblance of order and coordinate the evacuation, while secretly hoping no one would think to blame them for allowing the laboratory to fall down on their watch.

All eyes however eventually climbed back to the heights of the tower Cidolfus built. Plumes of ugly black smoke belched forth from crater holes in the exterior walls and the angry shadow light of sulphur orange flame could be seen dancing in the depths of those gaping open wounds. The flotilla of commandeered sky cabs rising in a haze around the tower rather unfortunately resembled a buzzing swarm of flies circling fresh carrion.

The Strahl, a beautiful moth amid all those insects, broke free of the mooring bays with another full cabin of evacuees. Vaan managed not to fully dock the ship on the ground and instead kept her in a hovering mooring just above the rooftop of one of the surrounding buildings as soldiers and physicians rushed in to escort injured or just frightened people away to safety. There was a quiet pall of expectation hanging in the air as the sun began to wane in the sky, turning cerulean blue raw and bloody. Everyone was waiting for the building to fall.

'We're doing the right thing,' Penelo said for the umpteenth time as she resumed her seat (Fran's seat) after making sure the entry hatch was securely closed. Vaan jerked the steering levers and nudged the Strahl into the air once more, headed back to Draklor. 'We had to help get people evacuated.'

'Yeah,' Vaan kept his eyes dead ahead waiting for the sky cabs criss-crossing in front of the holes in the tower to part and allow the Strahl clear access to the building. 'I know. It's just……'

'He's not dead.' Penelo said firmly. 'I'll bet you a million gil Balthier's elbow deep in some kind of mechanism, ordering Nono about while he does something or other to make sure the laboratory doesn't fall down.'

'Yeah,' Vaan smiled a little in answer to the determinedly light hearted look Penelo was giving him. 'I just wish we could dock up there and go and see!'

Penelo sighed, 'I know.'

Circling around the building in the Strahl both Rabanastrans felt, if not helpless, then horribly frustrated. It wasn't safe to attempt to dock the Strahl on any of the higher floors of the tower as the structure wasn't safe and there was no telling what would happen if stray exhaust fumes from the Strahl mixed with the noxious smoke and glossair fires beginning to engulf every floor above sixty. The sky cabs, smaller and lighter, could get closer, nipping in and out of the wider holes to pluck lucky survivors out of the wreckage before the fumes and flames could consume them. Had it not been for the fact that Balthier would literally come back from the dead to beat the pair of them senseless for endangering his ship, Vaan and Penelo would have risked a docking all the same.

'Vaan.' Just one word and she really didn't want to say anything at all. Still Penelo knew deep down that they needed to helping with the sick and the injured, taking the Strahl out beyond the Imperial city in case people needed help in the surrounding towns and villages. They needed to act like the crew of the Strahl should act; they had a legend to maintain. All the same Penelo didn't like it. She'd feel so much better if Fran was in Draklor with Balthier, which was silly of course, because then she'd be worried about _both_ of them and not just one of them. Maybe it was just the fact that Balthier's air of invulnerability had been seriously dented over this last year.

'I know, Penelo. I know.' Vaan's hands clenched on the steering levers reflexively and Penelo wondered for a moment if he could hear her thoughts. Then again, of course he could. She smiled and placed her own hand over his as his knuckles whitened on the steering levers. 'He promised.' She reminded Vaan.

He stirred and steered the Strahl away from the building, 'You're right. He did.' Vaan's shoulders straightened a little and he smiled just a bit.

'Right,' Penelo nodded grinning. 'So we'll just get on with making sure everyone's safe. Balthier will be fine.'

Vaan's smile slipped a bit and then returned with more firmness. 'Right, he promised; no more dying.' As he turned the Strahl away, towards the rest of the city where he and Penelo were needed more, Vaan allowed the memory of that particular promise to reassure the doubts inside him.

'_I beg your pardon?' Balthier, surrounded by bits of airship and remora parts looked up, a fistful of blueprints in one hand and a dangerously large wrench in the other. Vaan stood his ground as the older man scowled at him. Crossing his arms over his chest the Rabanastran decided that it was now or never. _

'_If you want me to take the Strahl you have to promise me you'll take it back. That means no dying, or nearly dying; right?' _

'_If I want you to take the Strahl….? What is this nonsense?' Balthier trailed off, eyes narrowing somewhat dangerously. 'Hmm, so much for loyalty amid one's crew; well then, Vaan, if you don't want her don't take her.' The Archadian had turned back to whatever great oily lump of metal something-or-other he had been pulling apart when Vaan had wandered into the Draklor engineering lab. _

_Vaan wasn't sure exactly what it was that made him so angry. He was used to Balthier being, well, _Balthier _and acting like the whole world hadn't gone horribly wrong only a few months before; _acting like he hadn't nearly died_. Vaan was even used to Balthier's lazy insults and the bored, indifferent way the other man had of ordering him about. None of that bothered Vaan, none of that had ever bothered Vaan. Until now. Reaching out one arm he grabbed Balthier by the cotton sleeve and jerked the other man around to face him. _

'_That's not good enough.' _

_Vaan wasn't sure who was more surprised Balthier, whose heavy lidded eyes widened perceptible before flicking rather pointedly to the hand Vaan still had clasped around his bicep, or Vaan himself. There was a moment when pirate and sort-of apprentice really looked at each other, a moment when a lot of things could have happened, and then Balthier relaxed very carefully where he stood, released a tired sigh and almost gently twitched his arm out of Vaan's hold._

'_Right then,' the older man quirked an eyebrow, 'I am going to assume that this rather rough handling is not a precursor to open revolt, and instead suggests that Fran was right, once again.' Balthier brushed his own hand over the Rozzarian cotton covering his arm, as if worried Vaan's hand had left a stain. 'Whatever bee is in your bonnet, Vaan, let's hear it.' _

'_I don't have a bonnet.' The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Despite what most people thought, Vaan wasn't a fool. He just occasionally said very foolish things. Balthier, familiar with the waffling nonsense that passed for conversation in his only half acknowledged protégé, gave the younger man a droll look and fished a handkerchief from inside the constraints of his gilded vest. There was some grease on his fingers he did not want staining his shirt. _

'_Couerl got your tongue, hmm?' Shooting a sly look towards an angry and mottle faced Vaan Balthier worked the grease out from under his fingernails with a pinched fold of the handkerchief. 'No matter; I dare say we are all far the richer for your silence.' _

'_Shut up,' Vaan snapped and Balthier watched him with the cool interest of a silver lobo sizing him up for lunch. Vaan flushed an unhealthy crimson colour. 'I mean- just stop talking! I have something to say to you.' He almost growled the last words in his flustered state, yet what he really wanted to say refused to budge from the tip of his tongue. He and Penelo had talked about it once the battle for Balfonheim and everything had started to settle down. They'd argued between the two of them about which one of them should say something to Balthier. In the end Penelo had won and that was why Vaan stood here now, rubbing fiercely at the back of his neck hard enough to give himself friction burns. _

'_So you intimate,' Balthier watched Vaan curious to see if the youth would pluck up the courage to really upbraid him as he so clearly wanted to do. 'Yet I appear to be the only one actually speaking.' _

_Moving across the engineering lab to perch on one of the lab tables Balthier pocketed the handkerchief and folded his arms across his chest. This was all damnably unfair; not three months shy from escaping death and the potential enslavement to the whims of a bitter semi-divinity, and still he received no respite. Oh no indeed, instead a seemingly endless cast of supporting players from Nono's extended family to bloody desert royalty had taken it upon themselves to censure him for the audacity of upsetting them all with his personal calamities. Now it seemed Vaan was itching to add his own two gil worth to the pot. Except of course bloody Ratsbane had yet to gather the gumption to spit the damn words out. Balthier did not enjoy being criticised at the best of times, but he hated _waiting_ for someone to criticise him even more. The fact that he somewhat believed Vaan had some partial justification to take such an attitude with him was the only reason Balthier was tolerating this whole silly business at all. Still there was a limit to his generosity. Finally just as Balthier was losing patience with the whole sorry debacle, the former street thief found his voice once again._

'_I don't want to be your replacement.' _

_Ah-ha, so here it came. Balthier bit back a smile. 'Indeed? Good for you. Now we have that settled be a good lad and sod off, would you?' Balthier's smile had much in common with the gaping maws of angry hyenas and his tone could at best be described as venomous. _

_Vaan scraped his foot across the floor, making the polished stone squeak. Balthier gritted his teeth and bit back the desire to tell him, rather pointedly, not to do that. 'Fran said……when you were, after the whole Phoenix thing when you were still……' the youth trailed off._

'_When I was otherwise dead?' Balthier smirked, 'Or at least performing a masterful facsimile of such.' It would have been amusing how unwilling his varied acquaintances and associates could be when it came to openly discussing that unfortunate period around him, had it not been so terribly tedious. He was the one who had nearly died, yet Balthier had no trouble calling a spade a spade and a failed suicide attempt a damned lucky break. 'Well then; what did Fran say, hmm?' _

_Vaan's cheeks were red. 'She said that I,' the youth swallowed. 'She said the leading man needed to go on, and that I could, you know, be the leading man if……' again he stopped. _

'_She said that, did she?' Balthier allowed a measure of the surprise he felt to touch his expression. 'Hmm; it's not often Fran misreads a situation quite so dramatically.' _

_Vaan looked up and Balthier met his eyes. 'You don't want me to, you know, take over from you, or anything?' The poor simpleton asked again looking perfectly hopeful. The jaded former pirate resisted the desire to cuff him across the head and send him on his way. _

'_Vaan,' Balthier sighed, 'Ignoring the question of whether such a metamorphosis was even possible; I have worked industriously over the years to make a reputation that is quite without compare or parallel after all,' The smirk he offered received a wane, vaguely embarrassed smile in return. 'I assure you that the thought of you replacing me as the Strahl's captain fills me with a queasy unease that would necessitate I live a hundred years simply to ensure such a fate could never come to pass.' _

_Vaan perked up instantly, 'Really?' _

_Balthier rather theatrically pressed his hand (freshly cleaned of offending oily stains) to his chest. 'With the utmost sincerity, I assure you.' _

_Vaan gave him a rather wary look, 'Promise? You promise that you're not giving me the Strahl so you and Fran can disappear or anything like that?' _

'_I am not _giving _you my bloody ship in the first place,' Balthier retorted sharply before reining in his annoyance. 'I am loaning you the use of my vessel as your own is barely fit to furnish the wares of the lowest vulgar scrap dealer.' _

_Vaan seemed much improved in outlook, bless the dim-witted former urchin, nevertheless he still lingered somewhat expectantly. 'You still need to promise.' _

'_Oh for the gods' own sake,' Balthier's fingers twitched. 'Promise what?' He demanded. _

'_Promise that you'll take back the Strahl yourself, and that you won't die or anything; at least not for years, anyway.' _

_Balthier stared at the moon faced Rabanastran who, in turn, stared back at him with placid and indomitable determination. Exasperation and some small measure of surprise simmered inside Balthier as he considered Vaan for a long moment. _

'_If I submit to this promise will you bugger off and leave me be?' He asked finally. _

'_Well yeah,' Vaan said sounding surprised, 'Of course.' _

_Balthier sighed, 'Very well then. I promise I will reclaim the Strahl, in person, from your custodianship at a time of my choosing very much alive and in sound body,' He quirked an eyebrow pointedly. 'Now will you bloody well go and let me work, or do I need to shoot you and ensure you do not usurp my position that way?' _

* * *

**Draklor: Sixty-Eighth Floor - A Less than Stellar Rescue**

Ffamran (Balthier) Bunansa watched yet another highly improbable, vaguely ridiculous death approaching him at break neck speed and found that he just didn't have the passion for this sort of nonsense anymore.

'Oh this is just ruddy marvellous.'

The runaway sky cab avoided splattering both Balthier and Selphie by mere inches as it smashed through the wall of the shattered corridor and into one of the labs beyond. Balthier, pressed into the rubble littering the corridor with Selphie underneath him, could hear the slaughtered pig squeals of brakes being somewhat desperately applied. He closed his eyes and waited for an explosion he was decidedly surprised to discover did not come. Extremely cautious, and more than a trifle afraid that he might be about to lose his head, Balthier looked up and around him, hauling himself up into a half upright position so he could peer through the mortar dust into the fresh hole left by the cab.

The sky cab had eventually come to rest in the rubble of an aeronautics teaching lab amid the wreckage of lab tables and steel backed stools. As the dust sifted downward in motes and drifts one of the sky cab's side doors slid back and open to the sound of rapidly cooling engines.

'A-ha! There see, I told you it would stop!'

A rather short and over-weight youth wearing a truly hideous lilac paisley embroidered frock coat and a lime green shirt with purple cravat half jumped and half fell from the cab into the rubble of the lab. He was followed by a tall, very lean young man with skin as dark as obsidian and hair braided and bejewelled with a multitude of beads. The final person to leave the cab was a blocky, muscular blonde youth with nearly translucent pale skin and a pensive cast to his face.

Balthier, thoroughly non-plussed, peered at the three young people with rather intent bemusement. Smith, buzzing down from its safe haven hovering about the ceiling dropped into a protective position before the hole in the interior wall and swept the three youths up and down with that one lethal red laser eye.

'Bloop,' Said the Rook and never had one mechanised syllable promised so much menace. Three pairs of eyes all blinked in surprise.

'Director Bunansa!' The pudgy boy surged forwards and then stopped when he noticed Selphie unconscious in Balthier's arms. 'What……what's happened?'

Balthier quirked one single eyebrow and regarded the three youths with a very level stare. 'Hmm yes, that does appear to be the question of the hour, does it not?' When the director of Draklor favoured the three boys with a smile, it was anything less than pleasant. 'Perhaps you gentleman would care to tell me, hmm?'

It could be said, with no little sincerity, that the former notorious sky pirate Balthier was anything but amused. The three young men all stared at one another; a dance of skittish regards and silently desperate looks. It was almost possible to hear young dreams and ambitions crumbling to dust in the face of the stark reality that the ire of director Bunansa was a pure and terrible thing indeed.

'I'm waiting,' the scourge of pirate kind murmured in a deceptively cool voice and the little fat lad in the truly appalling attire, who had the misfortune of being the evident leader of this group, found himself forced to account for his actions.

'Er, well, we're here to rescue you sir.' The tubby boy stammered. Balthier sighed and rolled his eyes.

'Save me from fools and their rescues,' shaking his head he checked Selphie's pulse and beckoned the boys forward. 'Right then, if you're about a rescue jump to it. Or must I give instruction, hmm?'

Three pairs of eyes stared at him and three young faces looked at him uncomprehending. Balthier sighed again. 'Take the girl and put her in the bloody cab.' He enunciated with deadly patience. 'Good gods, what do they teach you children in Akademy these days?'

Jumping into startled action the slack-jawed children came to fetch the girl, and just as they did so, Nono wriggled out from under the piece of drywall he was hiding under. 'Kupo – are we leaving now?' Balthier scoped him up and started the arduous process of dragging himself upright. 'So it would appear.' He wavered on his feet and immediately found the pale blonde boy at his side, hovering solicitously.

'Do you need a hand, sir?'

Somewhat lightheaded Balthier almost laughed, 'My hands are quite dandy, thank you. Should you happen to have a spare torso however that would be appreciated.' He looked down with a scowl at his blood saturated vest, 'Mine appears to be somewhat in need of drastic repair.'

The pale boy just stared at him tongue-tied and Balthier sighed, forcing his rubbery legs to carry his own weight towards the sky cab. 'Who in the blazes are you anyway?' He asked almost conversationally, glancing over to where Smith had taken it upon itself to supervise the loading of the injured Selphie into the cab. The boy, skipping along beside him stumbled to a stop, gaping.

'I……we……' he swallowed. 'Eirik. My name is Eirik, sir.'

'Well Eirik, how is it that you came to be flying my prototype through walls, hm?' Balthier glanced at him. 'A student, are you?'

'Er, yes. Yessir I am.' The boy pursed his lips and seemed to draw himself up. 'We're the _Cohort_, sir.'

Balthier cocked his head to the side, somehow he suspected he was going to regret asking this next question, 'The cohort?'

'Yessir,' the boy nodded vigorously. 'We're _your_ cohort.' The boy stood so ramrod straight it appeared someone had hooked him up by an invisible hook from the crown of his skull. It appeared very much as if the boy was a mere quiver from a full salute.

How very……odd.

Balthier had the disturbing feeling of standing on the metaphorical edge of a very steep cliff and looking down into the abyss as he studied the youth before him. In fact for a dreadful moment he was powerfully reminded of Vaan when he had first thrown the boy off Rabanastre's palace balcony. This alone was cause for considerable alarm. Still, conversational mores demanded he respond to the statement. Fully aware he was going to regret this probably very, very soon, Balthier committed what could only be considered conversational suicide. '_My _cohort, you say?' The boy nodded and Balthier's heart sank. This was precisely the reason he distained contact with the student body of Draklor. They were all bloody peculiar. 'Hm, I wasn't aware I had any such thing.'

The boy's pale eyes were huge and luminous, filled with a near fanatical zeal. Balthier found it highly disturbing. 'Oh you do, sir.' The boy insisted as earnest as the day was long. 'Me, Abe, Selphie and Bryon; we've dedicated our lives to being _just like you_ sir.'

Balthier paused, just before bordering the sky cab. He was in pain, nauseous from blood loss, eager to get the bloody hell off this tower before it caved in, and thoroughly fed up with the complications that made his life so interminably, lethally _interesting. _All the same the boy's words pelted the tattered shield of Balthier's mental defences like ballista mortars. He closed his eyes and shook his head despairingly, fighting the urge to groan out loud.

'Yes, I should have seen that one coming.' He murmured in open defeat before facing the other members of this little circle of apparent acolytes. 'Well, what are you waiting for?' he demanded irritably. 'I thought this was a rescue, hmm?'

The Cohort grinned hugely, all of them, and as Balthier sunk painfully into the back of the sky cab, closing his eyes in a vain attempt to deny reality the prototype shuddered into life punching through yet another wall and into the open sky. (And wasn't it lucky Balthier had had the foresight to install a paling shield upon the prototype? What a mess they would all be in now had he not.) Balthier was safe, Nono and Smith (also packed into the overcrowded cab) were safe – the requisite damsel in distress was safe (though still distressed due to a broken collar bone) but despite all this Balthier couldn't help but wonder if it was all worth the bother. He had ascended the heights of fame and notoriety and now he would have to pay for it.

Gods help him he had become a sodding _role model_!


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: Umm, okay so this chapter is a little, um, strange, graphic, possibly even a bit……suggestive. Just trust me when I say it will all make sense eventually ;)_

**The Silverfloe:**

Kebawn Aeduluc shuddered; blood hot enough to scald in the frigid air of the Silverfloe scored down his face from a freely gushing scalp wound. Eddies and wisps of snow scudded through the howling blizzard gales carrying with them the taint of stone dust and ashes. Wet, torn and bleeding Kiltia Kebawn clutched his staff close to him and recited Faram's prayer for the dying again and again in his head. He could not run. His leg had shattered below the knee in the final assault. All he could do was lean against his staff and wait for his end. At his feet the bodies of his brethren lay scattered, eyes crusted with flakes of snow, eternally sightless evermore. He almost envied them.

_Faram preserve and keep your loyal servants; take them to your heart…….take them so that……_

'Hume, do you not weep for your doom?' Over the greenish concourse of centuries old ice the _creature _swayed towards him. Tall, lithe, almost fragile the fiend resembled a woman save for the large ears that rose straight up from her head. The monster's clawed hands appeared gloved in thick, dark blood and gore.

_Father, oh Father; please Faram preserve me……..keep me…….Faram…._

Kebawn Aeduluc did not speak; it was not bravery but instead horror that silenced his vocal cords rendering him mute yet resolute in the face of his impending doom. He could only hope that his sacrifice and the sacrifice of his brethren already fallen would prove enough. He could only hope that his death would distract the creature long enough that the Gran Kiltias and her entourage could flee this forsaken place.

'Brave,' the creature sashayed closer, her stance both seemingly unsteady and monstrously enticing. Her wild mane of hair, crowned in ice and streaked with blood blew back from her face to dance with the snow and gales. Her body, long and sweet, was nude save for a second skin of fresh spilled blood. She reached for him, tapered nails dripping the heart blood of his brothers' kiltia. 'I had forgotten.' The creature crooned tilting his chin up so that Kebawn was forced to meet those blood drenched eyes. 'I had forgotten the bravery of humes. You live for naught and come from naught, yet still you fight. I had forgotten how beautiful you all are.'

Kebawn shuddered the scent of rain soaked violets and mint overriding the outhouse reek of blood and death for a moment. Gagging on sweetness and sickness Kebawn squeezed his eyes closed as those wickedly sharp nails dug into his half-frozen skin, piercing the flesh of his cheek.

'Tell me hume child; do you think me beautiful?'

Kebawn whimpered; he knew what was to happen. He had seen it happen to his brothers. Tears mingled with the blood already painting his ice chapped cheeks. The scent of violets and mint grew closer, wrapping around him like a solid weight. The creature's hair tangled about his head as she stepped closer to him. When she kissed him she tasted only of decay.

_Faram preserve and keep me; I am your loyal servant; take me Father to your heart so that I might live forever in your eternal love……_

* * *

**The Forest of Lanlet-Downe: Iona**

'Can we - can we stop a minute?' Ethain, stumbling along the forest path finally panted out after two hours uphill slog over verdant but treacherous terrain.

Fran sighed stopping a few feet ahead of him. The forest of Lanlet-Downe was not very much like Golmore. This forest was no tropical jungle sweltering under a permanent and near impenetrable canopy of thick, dark and interlacing tree branches. Instead pine cones lined the woodland path and the rich scent of pine needles caressed Fran's senses pleasantly. Golmore was a jungle with teeth and claws; Golmore offered only death and despair to any trespasser. This forest, pinpointed with sunlight through an open canopy and littered with wild flower rich clearings and shallow, but fast flowing, streams seemed to embrace her presence. She could almost hear this Wood; she could almost taste the patient, near indulgent welcome the Green Word of this place had to offer. So different from Golmore, and yet, there was one thing the same.

There were Viera here.

'What is it?' Severely Fran was beginning to regret the logic in bringing Ethain with her back to Fantl's Wood. She had thought it important to take with her to this strange Viera clan Fantl's life mate; the hume who had somehow quickened her womb. Yet now her own suspicions regarding this hume youth had reached the fore. She did not trust Ethain; he smelled of lies and guilt and weakness.

The youth shifted awkwardly in his worn travelling boots. His shoulder length dark hair was tangled by the breeze and his delicate features wane with a mixture of fatigue and nervousness. Fran twitched her nose; he stank of fear sweat.

'Are you really going to see the Viera?' He asked her stupidly.

Fran cocked her head to the side. 'You ask this now?' She stared at the youth, standing hip-cocked. She who had for years chided Balthier for his impatience, she who had accepted Vaan's clumsiness as merely the nature of youth, now found her ire rising in the face of this stripling's obvious discomfort. 'Our path had been set before we made port on this isle. You have known all along what path I walked.'

'I…..' Ethain swallowed audibly. 'I know. It's just,' he licked his lips. 'I am afraid.'

Fran arched a brow. Certainly she could smell his fear, but she wondered at what he could fear. Nevertheless she said nothing and merely waited. She had found that humes always had more to say.

'Oh blast it!' In a sudden burst of irritation Ethain kicked a pine cone across the forest path. It bounced over the bouncy blanket of fallen pine needles and smacked against the trunk of a tree. 'Damnall but I have made such a mess of everything.' The youth whined as he began to pace like a caged couerl.

Suspecting this would not be a swift confessional Fran crossed to a fallen tree branch, wide as she was through the waist, and perched atop it, careful not to step on any of the beautiful purple toadstools bursting forth from the rich soil all around the branch. Lightly she ghosted her palm over the slightly damp, worn surface of the branch sensing the life teeming within it still. She sighed deeply; it had been long months since she had filled her soul with nothing save nature's majesty.

'They'll kill me.' Ethain was not taken with the beauty of his surroundings at all, and instead paced around and around in a tight circle, gnawing on his own dirty nails. 'It's my fault she left; my fault she ran from the Wood.'

'Fantl.'

When Fran spoke it seemed like the forest took a breath. A shiver of sadness ran through Fran as the scent of pine closed in. _My daughter is dead?_ The voice was not a voice nor was it a thought. The Green Word was something else entirely, but Fran knew it sighed nodding minutely. _And the child within her womb; I am sorry. _Above their heads the fan-like fingers of the trees quivered and a rain of fresh needles tumbled to the ground around them, reminiscent of sweet scented tears. Fran felt the Wood's true and pure grief tighten within her own throat and was amazed that she, an exile of the Viera, a heretic of the Way, would be so graced and honoured by this sharing.

_No daughter of another Way,_ the Word of this strange Wood whispered in her ear, soft with benevolence and grace,_ though my children fly far from me, I do not shun them. It is the natural progression; my children are my seed. They must spread far and wide._ Fran gasped, tears pricking her eyes, paralysed by this unsought but precious gift of communion. _The Wood is everywhere, daughter._ The Green Word of Lanlet-Downe assured her, as a mother reassures a frightened child._ Alas that not all Wood is the same. _Tasting of Fran's loss, her long exile, the Wood offered the only respite possible._ Your pain is my mine child of the Viera._ For a moment the Wood touched her to the soul, in an embrace devoid of jealously or possessiveness. Then when Fran was both shaking and breathless, the Wood withdrew from her to carry news of Fantl's sad fate to her sister Viera. _Fear not my children, Fran once of Golmore, for they are as you are: walkers of the old Way. _

* * *

**The Silverfloe:**

Helpless as a snowflake thrown through blizzard tossed skies Kebawn could do nothing, absolutely nothing, as the monstrous female tore at his robes, ripping cloth and paltry armour away from his fragile flesh with the fury of a storm unleashed. When she bore him down to the hard, burning ice of the glacier floor, naked as the day he was born, Kebawn screamed as his shattered leg became twisted underneath their combined weight. The monster swallowed both his scream and his desperate pleading as her mouth closed over his.

Kebawn's silent screams to Faram for deliverance went unheard as throughout the silverfloe the ice storm howled.

* * *

**The Forest of Lanlet-Downe:**

Fran only realised she had squeezed closed her eyes when she opened them again, blinking back surprising moisture, to find Ethain kneeling beside her, worry writ large across his unfinished features. 'Faram preserve – are you alright? Are you crying?'

Fran tensed staring down at this hume with his scent of guilt and weakness, 'Should I not shed tears for my sister lost?' _Should you not weep also hume? _A sharper voice within the confines of her own thoughts demanded of Ethain. Perhaps sensing the accusation she would not demean herself to make the hume inched away from her and returned to his pacing a few feet away.

'I used to work on one of the merchant sea vessels that make port here,' Ethain confessed quietly staring blindly up at the treetops. 'Just a deck swabber; not even an officer or anything worth speaking of,' He shook his head bitterness tingeing his words. He scraped his fingers through his greasy hair. 'I dunno if you know much about the Viera in these parts, but they're right friendly as far as it goes. They've traded and lived harmonious like with the locals for decades.'

Fran arched a brow. 'I noted many Viera in the port.' In fact there had been a young viera working as a clerk at the tiny aerodrome and another at the local inn. At the time Fran had noticed this, but, as she had seen to her guilt over the last few years, it appeared more and more Viera were leaving the Wood for wilful exile amid the other races of Ivalice – particularly the humes. Therefore she had merely assumed that these viera were exiles also. Now it seems she had been mistaken.

'You claim that these viera are still one with the Wood?' Fran queried the youth, 'Even though they partake of the hume ways?'

'Right,' Ethain nodded warming to his tale. 'I hadn't ever seen so many viera in my life before coming here.' Once more scraping his straggling hair from his face Ethain almost smiled. 'Met Fantl at the Taverstock market; she was selling fruit preserves and honey the Viera had prepared.' Ethain shook his head and this time the smile he allowed free lit his entire face and glowed in his eyes. 'Faram take me but I swear I ain't never seen another with her beauty.' The smile wilted at the edges, struggling to maintain as grief doused the light in his eyes. The youth swallowed hard enough that Fran could see the pulse of his adams apple. 'She had a smile that could make the sun look pale.' He whispered.

'You loved her.' It was not a question and yet it was. In all her years walking the ways of humes the concepts of "love" and "romance" remained indistinct to Fran. Many times she had witnessed the wild and jealous infatuations of humes, or bangaa, or seeq with bemusement. She had read the writings of poets and scribes who spilled word after word upon pages innumerate denoting the many and varied splendours of love and found herself unmoved. Yet every now and then she wondered; wondered what it would be to know such love.

Under the gentle sun falling through the gracious canopy of this most welcoming of Woods Ethain turned to face Fran, tears standing to attention in his eyes. He nodded and the tears fell loose. 'Y – yes,' he whispered. 'Gods take me, but I loved her so much.' The hume swiped angrily at his face with one arm. 'Gods damn me; I wish I'd never seen her!' His sudden vehemence made Fran jump. The youth grabbed at the hair springing back from his temples in messy crow wings and clutched at it, face contorting in an expression beyond pain. 'I wish to Faram and all his saints that _she _had never seen me! Maybe then she would still live.'

Fran frowned, 'I do not understand.' Ethain's scent burned with such rage and self-reproach that to Fran he smelled like melted metal and scorched glossair cables. He smelled like an airship falling from the skies. He smelled of despair.

'Of course you don't,' The hume youth laughter was choking and savage. He staggered away, still clutching his head. 'Ah but the gods are having a right laugh now. I'm travelling with _the _bloody Fran. Bollocks to it, if only you coulda showed up weeks ago.' Swiping angrily at fat child-like tears Ethain turned empty glassy eyes on Fran. 'It was Fantl's idea to go to pissing Balfonheim; she was so sure you'd turn up one day. Gods, but that was her dream; _her sodding fantasy_: to meet her bloody idol.'

Fran blinked. Ethain had said something similar before, but Fran had not deemed it wise to pursue the subject. Now she felt odd, uncomfortable in her own skin. _Bloody hero worship, _the ghost of Balthier's voice purred in her mind, _This is what we get for setting ourselves up as legends dear Fran. Who would have thought the daft sods would actually believe the rot, hmm? _

'I am no idol.' Fran said in a voice far more steady than she felt. 'I am but an exile.'

Ethain's face twisted in contempt, 'If you really believe that, then you're a stupid bloody fool.' Fran's ears twitched at the insult but Ethain did not notice the sudden, lethal tension that thrummed through her body. 'Don't you get it? You are the sodding dream, woman! You're the Viera who broke the curse; the Viera who turns the tides of Ivalice. You're like Lente come again!'

'Lente?' It was a whisper on the knife edge, forced from Fran's closed throat almost painfully. Her heart skipped a beat within the suddenly too tight confines of her chest. 'What know you of Lente hume?'

Still oblivious to all but his own heartache Ethain merely shrugged as he resumed his restless pacing. 'Dunno, not much. Mostly just what Fantl told me; she said you should be the Voice of Viera, like Lente used to be. Gods but she was so enamoured of you. _And_ your sodding _Balthier_.'

Fran did not realise she was standing until she had imposed herself right in Ethain's path. Her muscles quivered with suppressed violence and her ears twitched abominably; around her neck the broken tear seemed strangely warm and heavy.

'What do you know of Balthier?' _And what business is it of yours, hume-child to speak of one you know not. _Spoke a sharper, fiercer part of her being. It was the part that did not like this hume; it was the part of her that labelled him as weak, untrustworthy.

Once more Ethain laughed a harsh phlegmy, cawing sound, 'I know that Fantl wouldn't have nowt to do with me less'n I could promise her a meeting with you and that bloody pirate toff; that's what I know.'

* * *

**The Silverfloe:**

When the end came it was almost a blessing for Kebawn. The creature, both beautiful and terrible, reared up above him, pinning him to the ground so that his bare back stuck to the harsh and sucking ice. The scent of violets pervaded his mind and the kiss of the snow burned in a thousand places over his frost numbed flesh.

'Beautiful child,' the monster cooed to him as her reddened talons became painted anew with his own blood. 'Do not be afraid. You are to be released from your meaningless struggle. The world of the living holds only hardship; rejoice in your deliverance.'

Kebawn could not summon the will to prayer as her fingers scored across the delicate, white-blue and goose-prickled skin of his chest and stomach. The vertical lines of fire she opened up across his flesh offered little lasting warmth. His blood flowed down his sides but he could scarce fill it. Instead Kebawn looked up at the sky above, angry and dark, and wondered where the Father was; had he not been faithful all his life? Why had his Father forsaken him to this monstrous creature?

As she lowered her head to lap at the blood welling from his shallow wounds the fiend whispered an answer to his secret thoughts. 'The gods love us no longer, for we are flawed and base. The Mother weeps and the Father has abandoned his children. We are alone.'

Kebawn sobbed then, the spear of her tongue digging deep and poisonous between the torn edges of his ragged flesh. 'Please……I beg you…….end this now.'

The creature looked up, his blood painting her face. She blinked eyes of crimson at him and then smiled, teeth stained with all that he had been. 'Very well hume child. May the Mother claim your bones and flesh as her own.'

Sitting up once more the creature, woman and fiend both, wrapped one large, tapered hand around his throat, while the fingers of her other hand, braced just below his breastbone, sank into giving flesh.

Kebawn screamed the name of his indifferent god as that clawed hand tore skin and muscle away and crushed his heart as if it was nothing more than a crystal of snow fallen free of the clouds.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: to everyone who reviewed last chapter (and who is logged on to receive individual responses) I promise I will be responding to you soon. Still I thought you'd all appreciate another chapter up so quickly instead of listening to me witter on anyhow ;)_

**Archades: High atop the Clouds in the Ministry of Law**

Despite the upheavals of the last sixty odd hours the sky line of the Empire's greatest city Archades, remained largely untouched. Trying to resist the improper desire to lean his brow against the thick glass of the full length window as he gazed out at the faultless sky, Balthier's eyes narrowed upon the lopsided silhouette of the Draklor Laboratory; despite all doom laden predictions the tower had yet to collapse in on itself like a flimsy house of cards. Instead it now resembled a smouldered candle, wherein the wax had burned away only on the one side. Floors seventy through sixty three were lost, but with every passing hour the pile stayed standing, Balthier grew more and more confident that Draklor would endure. The relief he felt about this was something he had no desire to explore or ponder. Much has he had little interest in listening to the litany of complaints the other occupant of the room was currently powdering the room with.

'Good gods' man, are you even listening?' Behind Balthier's back, the Magister in full armour paced towards him over a thick couerl hair rug.

'Unfortunately yes,' Balthier did not bother to turn towards the other man and instead flicked his eyes to where the judge's metallic visage was reflected in the glass of the window – a phantom superimposed upon the sky. 'I believe you were berating me for some manner of slight or another, your honour.'

There followed a decidedly undignified and disgruntled huff from the other man who whipped off his helmet with the irritable flare of long practice. The face of a supposedly dead man playing the part of a ghost stood revealed in the windowpane.

'You were told not to use the sunstones,' Gabranth-not-Gabranth rumbled as he stood beside Balthier staring out of the window. 'We found _seventeen_ of them secreted about the hull and front grid of the Shiva II. Damn all, Balthier; you betrayed your word to Lord Larsa.'

'Hmm, yes I did.' Draklor's director purred, cheered immensely by the news that the military's eagle eyes had only managed to find _half_ the sunstones he had implanted within the Shiva. 'I suppose this will stand as a lesson to our young lordling not to put his trust in known criminals.'

Despite the glibness of his words Balthier's heart really wasn't in this game. Forcing himself to move he straightened up and walked away from the window; every movement pulled taut the fresh line of stitchery lacing up his stomach. Sparks of discomfort tugged along his body outward from that wound, spreading in rippling waves from tip to toe; it was in short, unpleasant. Bugger it but Balthier missed the days when he could cheerfully risk life and limb safe in the notion that a quick curaga would solve everything in a jiffy. Mortality was all well and good in the abstract, but Balthier did not appreciate being constantly reminded of his own hume frailty.

'Did you have me dragged from my bed-rest just to harangue me your honour, or was there something in particular you wanted to discuss?' Spurred by a little flicker of his usual insolent verve Balthier sauntered around Gabranth's large and cluttered desk and draped himself across the man's equally large, carved chair. He swallowed a wince of pain as the movement yanked on his stitches again and awarded the knight in magister's clothing one of his more inanely irritating smirks.

Blast the man for dragging him from his comfortable bed and wondrously stupefying pain potions; his honour the Impostor would pay for this inconvenience. Certainly if it came to it Baltheir was fairly sure he could annoy the man to the point of despair and he _would_, oh yes indeed, Balthier rather fancied he would enjoy doing that rather a lot.

'Well your honour?' He demanded when the man remained impenetrably silent, 'Couerl got your tongue, hmm?' Gabranth who was truly Basch frowned opening his mouth, but the answer did not come from his lips.

'We wanted to know if you knew more about this recent disaster than might first appear.'

The Emperor's voice rose on the air from somewhere behind him and Balthier stopped himself from twisting around to look (thus wrenching his bloody stitches once again). Instead he heard the soft click of a hidden door slipping closed once more and the near silent hush of soft soled boots crossing the room. In mere silence and without a moment's qualm Larsa settled himself neatly in the far less ornate visitors chair on the opposing side of the desk. 'Hello Balthier.'

'Your Lordship.' As always the honorific took on a subtly different quality upon the former pirates lips. Primarily this address helped to illustrate the fact that the bleeding sky would fall before Balthier would ever accept Larsa as "his" liege and lord. As always Larsa took the insipient challenge without protest. He nodded his head once, politely, and threw the barb right back. 'Director _Bunansa_.'

Smiling benignly Balthier propped his head up on one fist, elbow resting on the chair arm and regarded the pubescent master of empire from a slightly lop-sided angle. 'Secret passageways built within the Ministry of Law?' He made a show of looking from the seemingly blank wall Larsa had emerged from to Gabranth standing sentry between the desk and the only door out of the office. He felt his lips curling up at the edges; oho so they were going to play one of _those_ games then? Hmm, this could be interesting. Clucking his tongue Balthier affected a slightly chiding tone as he speared Larsa with a droll look. 'Tsk. What a _Solidor_ you are, Larsa. No doubt your late lamented brother could do no better.'

'Did you know?' Larsa ignored this latest sly insult, his true blue eyes fixing unwaveringly upon Balthier. It had been claimed before that the Solidor stare could make sodding basilisks flinch. Balthier sighed; evidently the game was up already.

'Did I know what; that you forbade my experiments into solar power simply to spur me to greater explorations? Yes I knew that, just as you knew I would do whatever I saw fit regardless of your edict.'

Larsa almost frowned as he shook his head, glossy black wing of hair falling across his brow somehow emphasising the sleepless circles around those brilliant eyes. 'Balthier,' Ah and here was a honest note of exasperation staining the little lord's words. The dear lad must be exhausted indeed. 'I ask this as an ally: please do not play these games now.'

Larsa's voice almost cracked, in fatigue, not as a result of nascent adolescent changes. Balthier quirked a brow as Gabranth moved a step closer to his imperial charge. It was surprising the Landissian didn't start squawking like an angry cluckatrice with chick. Still the fourteen year old Emperor did appear somewhat overwhelmed; no doubt the last sixty hours had been a trifle hard on him too.

'Very well,' Balthier conceded after a discernable pause. 'What is it that you suspect I know, precisely?'

'Did you know before the quake struck that such a thing would occur? Did you– ' Larsa stopped himself before he could finish that last question, partly in response to the genuine flash of incredulous surprise that danced across the former pirate's face and partly because a Solidor always sought to remain in control of himself at all times.

'Did I cause it?' Balthier finished the question for him, the fingers of his right hand beginning to tap out an erratic tattoo over the blue and black checked patterning of his vest. Any number of snide or affronted responses danced upon the tip of his tongue but Balthier decided, whether due to his general discomfort or some fleeting swerve towards compassion for the boy before, to abstain from voicing them. Instead he took the radical approach of using honesty in his defence.

'No.' He said. 'I had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.' He flicked one hand outward in an airy gesture towards the window and the city outside. 'Did you honestly think I had?' Honest enquiry shaded into sardonic amusement. 'Did you suppose I had concocted some way of splitting the core of Ivalice in half within Draklor's tower? Need I remind you that it was my _father_ who aspired to godhood, hmm? I have no such lofty notions. Nor would I engineer an earthquake to strike _my_ bloody building.' Balthier considered a moment and then added, 'Not while I was still in it, at any rate.'

'Bahamut,' Gabranth covered his lone utterance with a lightly clenched fist to his mouth, like someone clearing one's throat. Balthier narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. 'What does that have to do with anything?'

It was Larsa who answered, 'You engineered the destruction of the sky fortress as a pretence to feign your death and engender your escape during the liberation of Dalmasca.' The Emperor pointed out. 'You are not adverse to taking immense risks with your person if you believe it will be to your ultimate profit, Balthier.' The boy emperor stared at him with those almost waifish blue eyes. 'Can you blame us for our -reticence – to take only your word as proof of your good intentions?'

'Yes, I rather think I can.' Balthier's retort was off his tongue and out in the wider arena of the conversation in an instance. Balthier knew himself to be a thoroughly wretched bastard of a man in most ways. Yet there were certain things he was not. One of them was a hypocrite and the other was a deceiver. If he had turned upon anyone then that man had known himself to be irrevocably Balthier's enemy before the knife fell. He did not like this baseless accusation from men he had never harboured any ill intentions towards. (Though_ that_ might be about to change.)

'Tell me, your lordship, aside from the sunstone matter, which we both know was a set up from the start, what have I done since returning to Archades that suggests to you I am harbouring plans to utterly eradicate this city from the face of Ivalice, hmm?'

'Here,' Gabranth moved forward with surprising swiftness for a man in that much metal plate. From somewhere on his person or some convenient drawer (Balthier was not sure either way) he had withdrawn a folded piece of velum, which he now dropped onto the desk before Balthier. 'Read this, perhaps then you will understand.'

Curious and increasingly suspicious Balthier unfolded the velum page to find a collection of messy lines forming the contents of some manner of journal entry; the disturbing part of this being the fact that the handwriting, cramped and barely legible, appeared to be his own.

……_.all matters are in hand; sunstone research going rather well. The old man had the fundamentals right, he simply lacked the acuity of vision to see things through. Might have a spot of bother with Larsa and the Judiciary when they find out, but I have some contingency measures in hand. Something that should shake the bastards up rather nicely; should give me the breathing space to finalise design schematics in any respect. This cloak and daggers lark makes for some rather entertaining intrigue but it is hardly conducive to swift progress. Well, I suppose that is the rub; Archades was not made in a day, after all. I dare say it shall take a trifle longer to ruin her as well. _

Balthier blinked, once, twice, thrice. 'What the bloody hell is this?' He flicked his scowling gaze from the letter paper in his hand to Larsa and Gabranth in turn. Larsa merely watched him and so it was Gabranth who answered, right hand meditatively brushing over the pommel of his brother's massive duel sword.

'Aye that's the question.' The Judge Magister rumbled pale blue eyes in a face gone hard stared at him. 'Do you have an answer Balthier?'

******

**Rainesfarrah: Ancestral Home of Senator Etteran**

The Lady Madrigalise Etteran paced across the stone polished floor of her family estate house nestled on the softly rolling south banks of the river Sararches far from the high towers and constant vigilance of the capital.

'You were foolish to attack Bunansa directly.' She snapped not bothering to look a the rather battered man sitting awkwardly upon her low couch. The man, divested of his cowl and vestments, shifted nervously large sword calloused hands rubbing against his knees. He could not get a word in edgeways before Etteran began her tirade again. 'Have you forgotten this man once helped murder his own father, not to mention assisted in the slaying of two Judge's of Empire? He is no pampered gentry prince grown fat on privilege and the illusion of safety.'

'He is a heretic and a blasphemer; He is an idolater! It does not sit well with my conscience this plan, my lady. The man deserves his death.'

Etteran turned then, her lean and almost skeletal frame dwarfed by the wide shoulders and thick muscles of the man perched on the edge of the couch before her, yet it was the man who leaned back and away in fright. Etteran's thin lips curled in an icy smile. 'Yet you could not kill him, could you Emilio? The pirate was too wily for you.'

'He has a sinner's luck.' The Knight Kiltia agreed grudgingly looking down at his nervously flexing fingers. His body, under the loose cotton clothing he wore, bore the marks of many days in Archadian custody and the various indignities this most heathen and godless of countries could exact upon a man. Emilio curled his fists in frustrated anger. 'Faram would not have such a man as this Balthier be honoured to carry out his work, m'lady.'

'Indeed?' A deft finger, thin as ivory bone, snagged Emilio's chin and jerked his face up to meet her dark and glittering regard. The older woman's pinched features and hard look held more terror in it for Emilio than any of the petty cruelties the Judge torturers had meted out upon him since he had failed to kill the pirate. 'And does Faram speak to you personally, Emilio? Are you blessed as Gran Kiltias Marana has been blessed; do _you_ speak for the Father now?' Simpered and sweet Etteran purred poison in his ear.

Horrified by the blasphemy she had tricked him into Emilio shook his head, shying from her touch, 'No m'lady. Forgive me; I meant no disrespect. I am Faram's eternal servant in this life and the next. You know this, m'lady.'

'Quite,' turning her back on his Etteran slithered across the stone floor of her large and airy study. 'Shall I tell you, 'Mio, what sort of man Bunansa is?'

Emilio frowned. He did not want to hear more of the heathen dog Balthier, but he would not dare to displease his lady anymore than he had already done. 'If it pleases you m'lady; I am your servant as much as I am the Father's.'

Etteran chuckled, a strangely sibilant sound. 'I am not sure that _that_ is not a greater blasphemy than assuming you know the will of Faram, Mio.' Jolting in surprise Emilio opened his mouth, but Etteran waved him to silence. 'Hush. It matters not.' Her tone was almost fond. She rested her hands against the lintel over the large, cold, fireplace and watched the ticking of the silver carriage clock for a moment.

'Ffamran Bunansa is a rare breed, Mio. He has somehow managed what many men aspire to but few can ever attain. He has surpassed morality. He can be painted as neither true villain nor hero. He is a criminal whose crimes do more good to the common man than ill. He has more power and influence than most monarchs, and a hand upon the tiller of Ivalice's fate, yet, unlike his father, he has no interest in exerting that influence for his own ends.'

Turning from the fire place Etteran strode forward again, moving to trace lovingly the features of the marble bust of the late Gran Kiltias Anastasis mounted to a plinth in the corner of the room.

'In short, Mio, Bunansa is a tool of phenomenal potential fashioned by his own capricious will. Is it not fitting that a man who has escaped all responsibilities of patriotism, fraternity, love or duty, should now find himself bound in service to a greater calling? Is it not fitting that it be we, the Knights Kiltia, who should so use this very atheist of weapons to our ends?'

Emilio was silent for a handful of seconds, in part due to the audible quaver of fervour and conviction in his lady's words and in part because of the words themselves. 'I do not think Bunansa is a man to submit, m'lady, even to the will of his Father, his Lord on high, Faram.'

Etteran turned away from the statue, smiling. 'Oh 'Mio, my silly little boy, I do not _need _Bunansa to submit. Rather I want him to fight, and the more he fights the tighter the noose shall become that I have so painstakingly fashioned for his neck.'

Emilio frowned metaphor was not his strong suit. 'M'lady I do not understand.'

Etteran sighed indulgently and shook her head, 'Of course you don't child. No matter. For all you need do is watch. I have already started the music and soon, very soon, we shall both have a front row seat to watch Bunansa dance to our tune.'

*******

**The Ministry of Law**

Penelo was on a mission. She shoved her way through the press of people, ardent, gentry and just about every other strata of life in Archades that anywhere else would simply be called 'citizenry'. The throng moved like the tide, brushing up against the minister of law tower and then shuddering back again, rebuffed by chocobo mounted lesser judges in their impenetrable armour. Everyone was waiting for the official proclamation from the ministry to them it was safe to go home. Everyone except Penelo, that is. Penelo had another objective in mind.

She was hunting pirates; one semi-retired pirate in particular.

'Excuse me,' easing through the surging press, cheek to jowl with starched and powdered gentry or sweaty tired ardents scurrying around to be the first with that newest, most sought after piece of information before the official proclamation was issued, Penelo was forced to employ all her dancers tricks to avoid be alternately crushed or trampled upon. 'Pardon me – sorry, if I could just – '

Jules had said Balthier had been taken from the clutches of his physicians to the ministry tower by armed guard, still the streetear didn't know if that guard had been for Balthier's own protection or as a deterrent against escape. All anyone knew was that Draklor's director had walked into the ministry of law in the small hours of the night and had yet to be seen under the waning sun of the next afternoon.

'Oomph……oh, excuse me!'

Finally expelled from the hume shoal Penelo stumbled to a halt right before one of the metal plated guards watching the side entrance to the ministry. The guard's face was covered by the grill of his helm (during emergencies the Imperial forces were allowed to don their helms once more, which Penelo thought was odd. Surely an emergency was the worst time to go around with their face covered.) Nevertheless he shifted to attention as she righted her balance.

'You shouldn't be here Miss.' The voice was garbled, as usual, but Penelo had actually started to get used to listening to people talking inside metal buckets (Vaan's description not hers, but it fit all the same). She thought this guard sounded more bored than hostile.

'I know; I'm sorry.' She smiled. 'I'm Penelo. I just wanted to know if Balthier was alright. He _is_ inside still, right?'

In many ways Penelo was a truly guileless, honest and decent young woman without either prejudice or conceit to blemish her nature, on the other hand, she was a sort-of sky pirate who counted infamous criminals as some of her nearest and dearest friends, not to mention the fact that she had probably seen more combat than this little hoplite could dream of. In short, as sweet and kindly as Penelo undoubtedly was, she was most assuredly not a fool. She knew her power and how to use it.

'Penelo – you're -?' Penelo thought she could almost hear the guard swallow nervously and she kept her smile both sunny and open. 'I'm not supposed to allow anyone entry to the building.' The guard growled, but it was less antagonism and more anxiety that roughened his already muffled voice. Undeterred Penelo simply waited out the inevitable, smiling softly.

'Oh but I brought potions,' she hefted the satchel strung across her torso. 'You can check them if you like. They're for Balthier. We were told he was hurt in the quake.' Penelo's face darkened with genuine worry that, despite being completely unfeigned, nevertheless served her ploy very well indeed.

'I……uh……' The guard, Eustace Everard, freshly minted lesser Judge of the fifth was in a quandary. Penelo watched him behind her mercilessly sweet smile. He had never stood a chance.

You see _everybody_ in the Archadian military knew the name Penelo; _Lady _Penelo the Emperor's _very special friend_ whom could gain audience with the highest ranking officials in Empire simply by turning up on their doorstep. This was _the_ Penelo who was partner to Vaan of Ratsbane, whom was known to be well acquainted with not only the Dynast Queen, the Marquis Ondore, and certain prominent members of the Margrace line, but equally well acquainted with the Emperor himself; not to mention the bloody prodigal Bunansa. In short there was barely a doorway to power and influence that Penelo and Vaan could not pass through in all Ivalice. Now Eustace (lowly Eustace one of many near identical judges of the fifth) found himself caught between his very explicitly worded orders (allow no one entry) and the disturbing notion that denying access to the Emperor's _special friend_ could be far more detrimental to a young officer's future career than simply failing to adhere to his orders.

It was a mortifying bind to be in and Eustace fervently wished himself to be almost anywhere else in Ivalice right this moment. Unfortunately for Eustace wishes alone did not get him very far.

'Ummm…….I uh….' Eustace began to sweat within his helm. What to do; what to do? The pretty girl before him continued to smile sweetly as if she already knew he would give way and let her into the building – let her do whatever she wanted – just because she was _Penelo. _Eustace looked into that round face and the sweet eyes in mounting panic. 'My orders……'

'I know,' the girl gave him a sympathetic look. 'But were your orders to keep _me_ out? Did Judge Gabranth or Zargabaath say: _do not let Penelo in to see Balthier_? Or are you just supposed to make sure untrustworthy people don't get in?'

Again the girl smiled and Eustace began to think it was no real surprise that this blonde haired girl from a provincial desert kingdom had managed to wrap the bloody emperor and most of his Judiciary around her little finger. Bugger-all but they didn't pay Eustace enough for this sort of malarkey. Closing his eyes and shaking his head, both gestures rendered moot by his helm, Eustace stepped aside. In doing so he failed to see the bright glow of triumph light in Penelo's eyes.

'You'd better be who you say you are.' He muttered darkly already deciding that if anyone asked after this he would blame the whole thing on his guard partner Hafner (who was presently on a break – the bastard) and deny all knowledge of the whole matter.

'Thank you.' Penelo flashed Eustace a smile that could light the darkest night and slipped by him through the side door Eustace released with his (or rather Hafner's) access code. 'I promise I'll only be a moment.' She told him gently.

Eustace just shook his head and watched the girl disappear as the door closed behind her. Right then, he thought. That was it; no one else was getting by him. Touching a hand to the sword hanging from his belt Eustace remained confident in his ability to uphold this new adherence to his duties right up until forty minutes later when a short, muscular blond man-child wearing a sleeveless vest too light for the weather ambled over. He was followed by a very mismatched group of young people, including three males and a girl with a bruised collarbone apparent under her classically Archadian attire.

'Hi!' Said Vaan, 'We're here to see Balthier; let us in and I won't have to hit you with this.' The Rabanastran hefted his scimitar curved blade and grinned.

Behind his helmet Eustace wanted nothing more than to cry.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Over a hundred reviews for twelve chapters?! Wow thank you all so, so much ;)_

**Archades: The Ministry of Law**

Larsa Ferrinas Solidor was a people watcher; he had been bred to it. Just as a mathematician must know numbers and a seamstress must know fabric so too must a Solidor know all there was to know about the material he worked with. It just so happened that a Solidor did not manipulate equations or bolts of cloth but instead worked to shape other men to his will. Watching was learning and Larsa suspected he would not find a more _interesting _subject than the man before him now.

The man born Ffamran Mid Bunansa ran his quick gaze over the cramped lines of text across the page for the third time. Larsa watched as the fingers of his free hand continued to tap out a dissonant beat across the unforgiving confines of his leather vest. Apart from a slight squint around the eyes, suggesting the onset of the same impairment of vision that had plagued his father, Balthier's face gave little away of his thoughts. This was not greatly surprising; guilty or innocent Larsa had not expected Balthier to admit to anything in word, deed, or gesture. In fact even his earlier surprise had fallen away. Instead the man looked thoughtful. Larsa was by no means sure this was a good thing.

'Hmm,' The other man murmured at last rousing himself to make response. Behind Larsa's back he felt rather than heard Basch shift almost impatiently in his armour. The man in his brother's garb had done a marvellous job of assuming his twin's identity, and slowly suborning that identity into his own (and in so doing redeeming Gabranth in the eyes of many). Nevertheless Basch Fon Ronsenberg was not a man for intrigue and the subtle, arch and meandering way Archades went about her business.

'Well man?' Basch grumbled, ruining the game of silence quite beautifully. 'Did you write this or not?'

Larsa suppressed a smile; it was ironic that the true identity of the author mattered less than might appear. It was perhaps the least important part of this tangled mess. Balthier lifted his eyes from the note and Larsa saw in those jaded brown orbs that Balthier understood the weightier matters as only a true Archadian gentry could. There was a flicker of sardonic amusement in the former pirate's gaze as he regarded Basch. Larsa saw the quirking of the other man's generous mouth and waited, braced, for some manner of barbed comment meant to provoke Basch. A moment later his muscles uncoiled in surprise when Balthier did not take the familiar conversational gambit.

'I'm not sure.' Balthier turned his eyes back to the note. 'My handwriting is bloody awful; a child's doggerel could easily be mistaken for my best hand.' The slight ghost of a smile suggested that Balthier as obscurely pleased by this fact. Larsa was bemused; why would such a fastidious man cultivate such poor writing?

'Ah,' Larsa said as realisation dawned. 'Of course; forgery is difficult to prevent. Yet by using a written style that almost invites easy imitation you discourage those from doing so simply by the logical expedient that if anyone can forge your hand then there is no legitimate gain to be accorded in doing so.' Larsa smiled thinly. 'I'm sure that has proved very useful in the past, Balthier. No doubt you have managed to wriggle out of contracts you did in fact sign simply by claiming forgery.'

The other man simply shrugged still sprawled lazily in Basch's chair and arched a brow. 'Or it might just be that I can't spell?' He suggested somewhat self-deprecating.

Larsa allowed himself a slightly more genuine smile in response. 'I rather doubt that.' The smile slipped away almost immediately. 'I understand that you are in some sort of……difficulty? There has already been an attempt on your life, and on Draklor's integrity.' Larsa saw the spark of amusement that last comment provoked within Balthier and swiftly moved ahead before the other man could divert them with witticism. 'Do you imagine that someone is trying to discredit you in the eyes of your allies through less direct means; a change of tact, perhaps?'

While it would be foolish to believe that Balthier would never attempt sedition (he had in fact committed treason against the Empire before, after all) Larsa was also not about to believe the first piece of incriminating evidence against the pirate to come his way just because it seemed plausible. It was simply a political fact that there were enemies of House Solidor and the Judiciary operating in this very city who had much more to gain from trying to drive a wedge between Larsa and his allies than did his allies to betray him. Yet with Balthier it was different. There was the bite of a far greater risk; more so even than the ex-pirate's unpredictable nature. Yes more worryingly for Larsa there was the dangerous fact that, no matter Balthier's own feelings regards his lineage, he was still a _Bunansa_ and Larsa was, and always would be, a _Solidor. _

The history of power in Archades was a bloody and convoluted one, and Larsa had dedicated himself to becoming history's greatest student. For instance, now, faced with the possibility that Balthier had returned to Archades with something more on his mind than merely breaking a few aviation taboos in Draklor, Larsa was reminded of one particular name from Archadian history; Ines of Atholl. The mother of a slew of senators and consuls to govern Archades before the first Solidor rose up to turn the notion of republic into nothing more than an outmoded idea, Ines of Atholl had also been founder of the Bunansa line.

There were some in Archades who even in this day and age saw the Solidor's as nothing more than a nest of power hungry dictators whom threw down a noble republic for no other reason than to gratify their lust for conquest and greatness. That self same vocal minority also saw the House Bunansa as the remnant of the last great Republicans of Archades. That in itself coupled with the swerve towards egalitarianism that underlined Balthier's mindset, proved a surprisingly potent image even centuries after the last Bunansa consul fell to the first Solidor upstart.

'Possibly,' Balthier accepted cautiously the suggestion Larsa had almost forgotten making, so caught in his thoughts he had been. 'Though I'll be buggered if I can work out why they'd bother. Trying to kill me is fairly rote, but this?' Balthier flapped the paper in his hand. 'I can't make head nor tail of what to make of this gibberish, and I might very well have written it.'

Larsa frowned. 'Nor I and that worries me.' He glanced curiously at Balthier. 'You think you wrote this?'

Balthier was still studying the paper and so did not see something very like fear tighten the corners of Larsa's mouth. 'Hmm, some of it seems familiar.' The pirate mused thoughtfully. 'I do occasionally jot down a thought here and there when I'm working. Some of this could have been lifted from my notes, copied down out of order and made to imply – well – I'm not sure, something rather seditious, I suppose.' The pirate laughed, oblivious to how very neatly his words ran parallel to Larsa's thoughts. 'Bugger me but it almost seems to suggest I engineered the sodding quake! I'd fain to see how I could, unless I have somehow gained godlike power during my travails and failed to notice such.'

'Your reputation is rather – fantastical,' Larsa tried to jest, yet he couldn't completely mask the anxiety pinching the corners of his eyes. This man before him had returned from the dead and led an army of forsaken men against a pirate incursion within a day of his resurrection; an earthquake did not seem completely beyond his means in such context.

Perhaps there was something in Larsa's tone he let slip from his control, for Balthier's head shot up and those jaded, heavy lidded eyes narrowed. 'And you, your lordship, are afraid of me.' Larsa expected a sly smile to accompany those words but instead the other man appeared oddly serious. 'Be assured I have no desire to see you dethroned. I have often been accused or recklessness, but even I am not rash enough to attempt Archadian games of politics.'

'I did not – ' Larsa stuttered suddenly very much a boy of fourteen and not a shrewd politician at all. He felt his cheeks flushing and his eyes widening. He was appalled that his true fears had been laid bare before the other man. 'I was not……it was not my intention to imply……' he stammered to a halt. No amount of words would be able to cover for his lapse.

Solidor and Bunansa had always vied for power throughout the annals of Imperial history, much as the houses of Zargabaath and Ghis had squabbled, or the way houses Hann and Bergen had engendered years of deep enmity between them, and that was nothing to the vicious feuding between the Houses Drace and Devona. Archades was a city built on the constant friction of warring gentry dynasties and it always had been; it had defined the politics of senate and judiciary for centuries. That his brother Vayne and Doctor Cid should have become true allies and not merely serpents twisted together in a poisonous tussle for greater advancement had been just one small aberration amid many far greater affronts to the natural order of life the pair had perpetrated together.

Now from across that thorny divide of history and ambition Balthier watched Larsa. Then the man looked over to Basch who had remained so still and silent Larsa had almost forgotten his protector was even present in the room. The pirate seemed oddly sombre as he turned back to Larsa.

'I am not my father and you are not your brother.' He said, shocking Larsa to the core.

Balthier smiled faintly noting Larsa surprise and it was strange indeed, but the smile appeared more tired grimace than sly smirk. 'Hmm, yes; I know my history, your lordship, just as any gentry boy does.' Balthier sounded almost - kindly. 'What is more I am a student of cruel irony.' The smile turned wry and once more Balthier's eyes turned to the paper still in his hands. 'We're being played by someone, and quite masterfully, that's for sure. I just wish I knew what their ruddy game was.'

Larsa could not think of a thing to say as Balthier rose unhurriedly to stand, unable to hide a slight wince as he forgot himself and started to stretch out his arms, only for his injury to catch him unawares. As Larsa remained seated on the other side of the desk Balthier laid the paper down and stepped over to Basch, hands held out before him and away from his body, wrists pressed together.

'Right then your honour, let's be about this properly, hmm?' The bluff cheer and smirking guise was back in the place as the pirate presented himself to a surprised Basch much like a prisoner awaiting shackles. 'In deference to my surrender, do you suppose we can dispense with the leg irons? They do make walking with dignity a bloody chore.'

Basch frowned, watching Balthier warily, 'What game are you playing here?'

'Oh I assure you it is not my game.' Balthier tossed his head so his earring caught the light. He sighed with exaggerated patience. 'Whatever was intended by this missive,' he waved a hand back at the desk. 'It would seem that we are being forced to play a rather odd game all the same.'

Balthier studied Basch keenly. 'Really, your honour, what would the senate say if they learned that you had evidence of my possible sedition and, rather than taking the proper recourse afforded by the law you are required to uphold, let me go about my treasonous business, hmm?'

Basch tensed understanding dawning in him at the same moment it did Larsa, 'Damn it man, you know what is done to traitors.'

'Hmm,' Balthier smiled lazily. 'Well in regards to that,' his hand ghosted over his stomach. 'The Judiciary's dear torturers will find it a simple matter to take my guts for their garters, at the very least. They are barely stitched in as is.'

Larsa rose stiffly from the chair, mind racing down paths he did not want walk, let alone run – but then again so little in his life was a matter of choice. 'Gabranth,' His voice shook and he tensed his spine, forcing his emotions under his control.

'My Lord?' Basch's tension rang like a bell in the silence. Larsa glanced briefly to Balthier who continued to look merely amused already knowing what must be done. Larsa fancied he saw understanding and acceptance there as well. Or perhaps that was merely his own hope? Regardless he turned back to Gabranth.

'Do you duty Judge Magister,' he said in his most authoritative voice and the words fell heavily, like an executioner's axe. 'Take this traitor away.'

******

**Ministry of Law - Mezzanine Garden **

'Treason,' said Penelo, somewhat breathless from her quick step run along the Ministry's corridors. As afternoon faded towards sunset a gentle breeze played over the coiffed and well manicured shrubbery and raised flowerbeds of the balcony garden. The floral space was empty except for she, Vaan, and the four Draklor students who had helped get Balthier, Nono, and Balthier's pet robot out of Draklor safely. 'One of the soldiers here told me that Larsa himself charged Balthier with a conspiracy to commit treason against the Empire and he's been taken to the city dungeons.'

'Treason?' Vaan asked at the same time that one of the four students, the fat one, squeaked the word in horror. 'The Director would not commit treason against the Empire!' The apple cheeked boy insisted hotly.

Penelo and Vaan exchanged a slightly awkward look. Vaan rubbed the back of his neck nervously. 'Uh…….' He shuffled his feet. Technically Balthier had already acted treasonously against the Empire; twice in fact. The first time when he ran away from being a Judge and the second time when he led Ashe and the rest of them right to Draklor and helped take down two Magisters and Vayne Solidor himself. Vaan didn't pretend to be an expert on the finer points of Archadian law but he was pretty sure that you couldn't actually get more treasonous than helping to kill an Emperor. Still despite knowing that all these actions were completely justified Vaan found he wasn't sure what to say. Byron and the others seemed like nice people and Vaan didn't want to give them the wrong impression about Balthier – even if the wrong impression was actually pretty accurate.

'Ummm,' He mumbled rubbing his neck even harder. Penelo jumped into the breach then, smiling soothingly at the four students.

'Well he certainly isn't a traitor now!' She said brightly. 'I mean you'd all know if he was doing anything treasonous in Draklor, right?'

'Bloody right kupo!' Poking his head up out of the top of the rucksack he had been hiding in, the one strung across Eirik's back, Nono narrowed his liquid eyes at Vaan and Penelo pointedly. 'Kupo-po we have to get master Balthier out,' the moogle shivered, 'before Mistress Fran finds out.'

Penelo wrung her hands together. 'Larsa wouldn't do something like this without good reason. I know it. There has to be something else going on.'

'Right.' Vaan nodded firmly then paused and turned to his partner. 'Like what?'

Penelo opened her mouth and then closed it. 'I don't know. I just can't believe Larsa would arrest Balthier without a really good reason – and I can't believe Balthier would really do anything to try and hurt Larsa either.' She continued to knot her hands together in agitation, satchel of potions discarded at her feet. 'I can't believe everything has gone so wrong! I really thought people would stop trying to kill Balthier now he wasn't pirating anymore.'

The tall dark skinned boy called Abe cleared his throat. 'Excuse me?' The prince of Pressia had a voice as rich and dark as midnight and it made Penelo shiver to hear it (much to Vaan's annoyance). All eyes turned to him expectantly as Abe posed his question. 'Forgive my ignorance, but does this happen often? Is the Director frequently implicated in murderous plots?'

'Oh sure,' Vaan said with an easy smile (he'd been worried Abe was going ask an awkward question). 'It used to happen a lot. I mean just last year some friends of ours set every bounty hunter from here to Dalmasca onto Balthier because they wanted him to become pirate king and stop the pirate wars.' Vaan puffed himself up proudly. 'I was kidnapped and tortured for a bit by one of the rebel pirates, actually. Balthier called in the Maquis of Bhujerba and the Bhujerban airship fleet to blow the bastard off the map.'

'_Vaan_!' Penelo elbowed him in the ribs as she hissed in annoyance. 'This is one of those things we discussed, remember? _The things you don't just tell people about!_'

'Why not?' Vaan rubbed his stomach and lower ribs somewhat aggrieved. 'We can trust them.' He nodded to the four people watching the exchange avidly, 'Right?'

'Absolutely,' the girl in the group, Selphie, nodded her head vigorously and then winced. Her broken bones had been healed but her collarbone was still rather sore and bruised. 'We're completely dedicated to the Director.' The three boys chimed in with their agreement of this fact. 'We're modern Archadians,' Selphie went on to explain. 'We believe firmly that Archadia should not resort to conquest but instead use her technology to help better the lives of all in Ivalice in the spirit of universal peace and prosperity.' The girl tilted her chin proudly and intoned very seriously. 'Knowledge, not bloodshed, is the only way to true enlightenment. And if that means using heavy armaments to blow up pirates then so be it.'

Vaan and Penelo blinked in tandem fairly sure there was quite a hefty contradiction at work somewhere in that statement. Vaan cleared his throat, 'Uh……right.'

The short round boy, Byron, shook his head looking disgusted. 'Ignore her. She's full of daft ideas like that.'

'I'm full of daft ideas?' Selphie squawked, 'That's rich!'

This statement immediately started a round of bickering between Selphie and Byron, which swiftly absorbed the other two as well. Vaan grinned and exchanged a complicit look with Penelo pitching his voice low. 'I like them.' His grin grew a little wider. 'Balthier's going to be so glad to see us when the six,' Nono poked his head around Eirik's shoulder and frowned and Vaan swiftly amended to, 'uh the _seven _of us rescue him from lockup.'

Penelo swallowed a rather wicked smile all her own as she thought about what Balthier's reaction would truly be. 'Do you think leaving that 'blooping' machine in the Strahl was a good idea? Could we use it, do you think?'

'Bad idea,' Breaking away from his bickering match with Selphie Byron spoke up, having somehow managed to overhear the Rabanastrans' exchange. 'Very, very bad idea to expose a working thought engine prototype to the Judiciary; especially when master Balthier's gone to such efforts to keep Smith a secret.'

'He has?' Vaan didn't even try to keep his confusion from his face and voice, 'but I've seen that robot lots of times. It's always dusting and polishing and, you know, following Balthier around.'

'Well obviously,' Byron folded his arms over his chubby middle, 'but most people assume it is a re-programmed tool; no one is supposed to know that Smith is possessed of the first ever fully functioning artificial intelligence.'

'It's not artificial,' Eirik spoke up for the first time. 'It _is_ intelligent; Smith is sentient. There is no such thing as an artificial intelligence. Something is either possessed of intelligence or it isn't. There is no in-between.' The tall, slim, and very pale Eirik frowned in aggrieved fashion at the round and ruddy Byron, 'We've had this discussion Byron; we all agreed that artificial intelligence was a poor classification.'

'He's right,' Selphie nodded. 'Artificial life-form might be a more accurate descriptor.' She added thoughtfully. 'It would need to be taken to some sort of adjudicating panel of experts I suppose before true classification could be made, but then again, is there an expert forum for artificial life forms?'

'No,' Byron puffed himself up. 'That argument is fundamentally flawed. Smith's sentience was created via technological means. His intelligence was granted him through an amalgamation of Doctor Cid's thought patterns and the Director's. Therefore it is not a natural intelligence. Come _on_ people! You were eavesdropping on the same conversation between the Director and Mistress Fran that I was!'

'You're fundamentally flawed, Bryon!' Selphie stamped her foot.

'Oh yes very intelligent argument, Selph: resorting to insults is the recourse of the plebeian.'

'I'll give you plebeian you – ' The dark haired girl's fist balled.

'This is not the time for this.' Abe stepped into the breach before the first blow could land. 'In any respect I am inclined to agree with Bryon. Certainly without extensive testing it is impossible to know whether Smith's intelligence is a true facility to reason or merely an ingrained template of actions within a limited sphere of received experience.' He intoned solemnly.

'Yes but we know that Smith has a concept of self-preservation.' Eirik spoke up earnestly. 'He pretended to be powered down as soon as we landed in the Central Square. He knew enough to recognise the danger posed by discovery. Self-preservation is a central tenet of intelligence.'

'Oh bollocks, is it!' Byron's chubby hands waved wildly as he gesticulated in his annoyance. 'You might as well argue the average couerl is intelligent if you're going to use that argument.'

A faint stain of red flushed the pale boy's cheeks, 'There is no reason to think that they aren't – '

Thus as Penelo and Vaan stood in the balcony garden somewhat agog the four Draklor students descended into a existential debate regarding the means and methods of classifying sentient life, by way of a brief foray into the nature, both physical and spiritual, of living intellect. There was also a colourful assortment of swearing added in to the mix.

'Wow.' Vaan whispered awed.

'Right,' Penelo agreed unable to stop staring. After a moment she felt the need to hold Vaan's hand. 'Are you sure it's a good idea taking them with us to see Balthier? They're, well, they're sort of like a lot of really young Doctor Cid's.'

Despite himself Vaan grinned. 'Definitely.' He squeezed Penelo's hand. 'We definitely should take them with us.'

Personally Vaan could not wait to see what Balthier would do when these four started arguing like this in front of him; especially if the older man happened to have his Arcturus to hand.

*******

**The Archades Imperial Gaol: **

Balthier reclined carefully over the thin as a board bunk attached to the wall of his Spartan cell. He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the drab stone ceiling, whistling an absent-minded tune through his teeth. Well this was a fine how's your father, wasn't it? A right royal bugger up; Fran would be decidedly unimpressed with him should she hear about this. Unlacing his fingers from behind his head Balthier reached down with one hand to fish out the pendant from inside his collar. He pondered the faceted stone for a moment. He hoped wherever Fran was her endeavours were progressing a tad more smoothly than his own. Or at the very least that she wasn't banged up in chokey.

Of course he rather doubted the Viera had prisons so by that logic she was no doubt perfectly fine.

It had become palpably apparent to Balthier during his little audience with Archadia's pubescent Emperor that he had somehow fallen into a rather elaborate and well constructed trap. Innocent of any specific wrongdoing - or at least of attempting anything approaching sedition – Balthier had realised pretty swiftly that his only recourse in the face of the "evidence" against him was either to scarper sharpish (which he did not want to do – running away was a perfectly fine strategy, but only on his own terms) or, only slightly less abhorrent to his pride and sensibilities, the other option was to play along with this deviously pre-scripted drama. Therefore, the leading man, ever a performer on life's cruel stage, allowed himself to be cast as traitor hoping that the author of his little farce would show themselves eventually. Hopefully this would be before the Empire's prized interrogators cracked out the hot pokers and pincers.

'Bollocks to buggery,' Suddenly impatient Balthier attempted to sit up in one smooth motion, and once more forgot his injuries. The subsequent thundaga bolt of pain through his mid-drift stole the breath he needed for the foul and uncouth curses crowding off his tongue. He was getting bloody sick of all this! Rising with considered care from the bunk, once he was sufficiently recovered, Balthier wandered over to the solid metal door of his cell, with its small peephole window. He rapped lightly on his side of the door.

'You there,' he called to the guard stationed outside his cell door. The very young Imperial flatfoot turned to stare at him wide eyed. 'Good fellow. I have a question; would you be so kind as to oblige me?'

'Eh?' The guard blinked at him. 'I ain't supposed to speak with prisoners.'

Balthier smiled, 'Not to worry.' He told the simpleton in his most hale and hearty tone. 'I'm not a prisoner; I'm a guest. I surrendered you see; makes all the difference.'

The guard, who bore more than a worrying resemblance to that reprobate Jules, with the same lank and greasy dark hair and slightly rodent-like appearance, stared at him with the gimlet eyes of a vulgar-born. A slight smirk touched his slack mouth. 'Is that right mate?' He asked amused.

'Indeed, and, as it happens, I am also an exceptionally wealthy guest. Who will be more than happy to recompense you for any information you can bestow.'

'You what?'

Balthier sighed and restrained his impatience. 'Tell me what I want to know and there's Gil in it for you. That plain enough for you; or do I need to speak more slowly?'

The vulgar guard grinned flashing yellowed teeth, 'Nah mate, yer a'right.' He cocked his head to the side relaxing his already fairly poor posture. 'What yer wan' know then?'

'The man who tried to kill me; what happened to him?'

'The Kiltia bloke?'

Balthier nodded, 'The very same. Has been hung, drawn and quartered? Beheaded? Put to the question or otherwise disposed of?'

The guard laughed. 'Yer havin' a laugh mate,' he snickered and then shambled close enough to the door that if it wasn't for poor angle Balthier could have slipped his arm through the peephole hatch and wrapped his hand around the vulgar's throat. 'The daft bugger's already out; got bailed a couple days ago.'

'Really?' Balthier's mind raced. He felt like he had felt for months as he tried to piece together the mysteries of the symbols he saw in his dreams. This was a different puzzle to be sure, but he still felt like a man scrambling to find a logical pattern while surrounded only with disparate pieces of information. 'Do you happen to know who bailed him?'

'Sure,' the guard grinned. 'It were me that let 'im loose.' The grin grew wider. 'Ain't s'posed to tell no one though.' He tapped his slightly red nose. 'Need to know basis, ain't it? And you, an' them bleeding magisters, don't need to know.'

'How much were you paid?' Balthier demanded in crisp voice. He was already suspecting a fairly hefty sum. Should this guard be found out he would likely face the death sentence for contravening the law in such a manner. The vulgar guard, more than aware of his own precarious position lowered his voice, though the corridor was empty as far as Balthier could tell.

'Fifteen hundred Gil,' he whispered rat eyes glinting. 'More'n a months wages that is.'

Balthier absorbed the sum. In his opinion the man could have easily asked for more, but then, that was the great joy of bribing vulgars; they were so poor to begin with you could underpay them and they'd still think they'd put one over on you. Balthier had done it himself enough times with Jules, though in truth the master streetear was more savvy than most of his ilk.

'Hmm.' He fixed his gaze on the other man. 'Give me the name of the one who paid you and there's three thousand Gil more in it for you. Double what you've already _earned._'

The Vulgar's eyes went wide, 'Bleeding 'ell, you serious?'

Balthier quirked a brow, 'Do I appear to be jesting?' He asked dryly.

The crooked vulgar guard licked his lips. 'It was that frigid madam, you know; the uptight old bag from the senate. Wosshername?' The man frowned. 'Etman, Etherton……'

'Senator Etteran.' The name escaped Balthier's lips like a curse. The guard nodded smiling.

'Yeah, mate that was 'er name a'right.'

Balthier took a deep breath as the pieces of this strange puzzle began falling together in a most unexpected manner. Dismissing the vulgar from his thoughts entirely Balthier walked the few paces to the back of his cell and braced his hands against the clammy stone.

'Lady Madrigalise Etteran? Hmm,' Balthier leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes ignoring fatigue and frustration in favour of serious thinking. 'Well now,' he drawled. 'What an interesting little game this is turning out to be.'


	14. Chapter 14

**708 O.V. The Archades Imperial Gaol**

Despite their vaulting reputation and the amiability of Penelo's smile and Vaan's seeming harmlessness (despite the fact that he was conspicuously armed) it still took a while for Vaan, Penelo, and the four students to finagle their way into the Imperial Archades gaol. Of course after they had managed to get into the cellblock finding Balthier was simplicity itself.

He was playing cards with the prison warden in the guards quarters – naturally.

'Bleedin' 'ell – are yer cheatin' mate?' One of the guards, Private Laudermilk, slapped down his bad hand in obvious pique and slumped back in his rickety wooden chair.

The object of his address, the prisoner Ffamran (Balthier) Mid Bunansa looked up from his own ever-increasing pile of gil coins to the private and arched an inquiring brow coolly. 'Naturally,' he averred. 'Is this a problem?' Then without a by-your-leave Bunansa's quick, be-ringed hand snatched up a bit more of Laundermilk's dwindling reserve of coin to add to his own.

'What the – yer can't just outright admit to cheatin'!' Laudermilk was not sure what bothered him more, that the arrogant toff had spent most of the evening robbing him blind and he hadn't noticed until now, or that he could be so brazen as to admit it. Helplessly Laudermilk turned to his superior officer for help and guidance.

'Can't take the heat get out t'bleedin' kitchen Milky,' Snapped the warden on night shift, Sergeant Smythe. The Sergeant, a savvy man, had already rumbled the prisoner's game and recognised it as a clever ploy of bribery. As he appeared to be the beneficiary of said sinecures and enticements Smythe saw no reason to do a damned thing about it. Everyone knew Bunansa would go scott-free of all charges in a day or two – sodding gentry politics – and Smythe figured he might as well make a profit out of the situation while he could.

'But sarge!' Laudermilk, alas, was not all that savvy to the subtle nuances of power, influence, and corruption that flavoured Archadia's rather idiosyncratic judicial system. He stared from the benignly smiling prisoner to his superior officer in bafflement. Scamming prisoners of their gil was one thing, but he was not in favour of being on the receiving end of a con. That was bang out of order, that was. To add insult to injury Bunansa, as cheery as you please, siphoned off some of his ill-gotten winnings and pushed the coins onto Smythe who accepted the gift with indifferent grace.

'Oi!' Laudermilk was a appalled. 'That's not right!' The private pushed out of his chair, thoroughly put out. 'Yer can't use me own gil to bribe the sarge!'

Bunansa stared at him, 'I think you will find that I can.' Bunansa fixed him with a steady look. 'I've already donated a few hundred gil to your colleagues on the day shift, consider this an act of reciprocity.'

Laudermilk had no idea what reciprocity was but there was one thing he was clear about, 'Yer goin' t'bleedin' pay fer that mate.' Balling his fists Laudermilk was further infuriated when Bunansa, rather than showing even a twitch of concern, glanced over at the sergeant and inquired in disinterested aside, 'I take it this oaf is new to the Judiciary, hmm?'

'Aye,' Smythe sighed as he carefully finished sorting his bribery won coin into his gil pouch, 'Six month secondment over from the Tollbooth.' Smythe rose slowly from his chair, managing to make the gesture much more imposing than Laudermilk's fidgeting antics. 'And likely to be back at Tollbooth before he knows what's what too.'

'What?' Laudermilk quivered where he stood. The Tollbooth was the worst assignment any Judiciary underling could receive. It was a torture of tedium; cold, draughty and excruciatingly dull. Laudermilk had been counting his lucky stars ever since he'd won secondment out of there.

Bunansa was shaking his head sadly. 'Ah, the Tollbooth; I remember that from my days in Judiciary.' The prisoner eyed Laudermilk with feigned sympathy. 'As I recall self-mutilation and immolation were fates less feared than Tollbooth duty.'

'Right yer are,' Smythe agreed as Laudermilk tried hard not to whimper where he stood. 'Shame to, Milky here's a bit on the simple side but he was learnin', bloody shame really.' Smythe rubbed his blunt fingers through the bristles of his close cropped beard and watched the green private with jaded eyes. Laudermilk broke down under the pressure with almost indecent haste.

'Please sarge! I ain't goin' t'say anyfink - just don't make go back t'Tollbooth.'

Still sat at the table Bunansa made a show of examining his cuffs, averting his eyes and looking downward so Laudermilk could not see his smirk. Smythe, who was used to breaking the will of innumerate minions under his command, remained impassive. 'Yer on thin ice boy – yer hear?'

Almost weak at the knees with relief Laudermilk was close to genuflecting at his sergeant's feet in gratitude. 'Thank yer Sarge; thank yer. I promise I ain't goin' to say nofink to no one about no bribes, or about letting prisoners move around the cells without shackles……or lettin' prisoners out of t'cells t' play cards or……'

Smythe cuffed him around the back of the head, 'Just keep yer damn gob shut boy, a-right?'

It was at this point, while Laudermilk bobbed in obeisance and Smythe stood, meaty fists resting upon stout hips in dubious benediction and Balthier watched the whole corrupt show with wry amusement that Vaan, Penelo, and the cohort of students entered the scene.

'Balthier we're here to……' Vaan stopped his words before they could be any more incriminating than his mere presence within the inner dungeons of Archades most infamous prison. He stood in the doorway looking a bit non-plussed and Penelo and the other four people with him promptly ran into the back of him, knocking him across the threshold of the room.

'Who the bloody 'ell are yer?' Smythe demanded, but without a great deal of ire. Truthfully Smythe wouldn't care if the whole gaol burned down around the magisters ears (so long as he wasn't on shift when it happened).

Balthier, for his part had planned for the contingency that someone might come for him here in the dungeons (hence all the bribes to induce the guards to further complacency) but was nevertheless a tad surprised to see Vaan and his sweet little compeer. He hadn't known the Rabanastrans were even in Archades to begin with. Of course, Balthier reasoned darkly, he should just stop being surprised by anything at all after all the peculiar twists of fate he had experienced.

'Ah Sergeant,' rising from his chair with easy grace despite his still tender wounds Balthier decided to make the best of the situation, 'These are the guests I've been expecting.'

Smythe eyed him and then the curved blade very obviously on display hanging from Vaan's belt. Smythe thought about the trouble he'd be in should anyone hear about all this. He thought about the high probability Bunansa was about to enact another one of those extraordinary prison breaks he was so bleeding famous for – and Smythe also thought about the pleasing weight of his gil pouch bulging heavily from his own belt. The prison warden sighed and came to a decision; after all it wasn't as though he even particularly _liked_ this prison guard lark anyhow. Maybe he'd retire to some quiet village far from the capital and never have to see the inside of a gaol again – in any capacity.

'Guests, you say?' He asked mildly already knowing he didn't give a fig's arse for the answer.

'Hm, yes.' Bunansa's slight smile was the smirk of a man who didn't just expect to always get his own way – but _knew _absolutely that he _would_ get his own way. Bunansa was just the sort of man to whom life gave way, instead of the other way around. 'It is the bane of popularity – one has to expect visitations even at such unseemly hours.'

Laudermilk continued to stare at them all in horrified awe and Smythe had just about had enough. 'A-right bollocks to it,' He pointed to the fair haired youth and his retinue. 'I ain't seen you, any o' you.' He glanced back at Bunansa. 'I ain't even seen _you_ – bugger it, don't reckon I even remember if I seen _me_!'

(Insanity was in fact a legitimate defence plea in Archades, however as a defendant had to prove they were madder than the sodding judge condemning them it was not an oft used defence – Smythe would give it a shot, however, if it came to it.)

Bunansa inclined his head as graciously as any Emperor, 'That's the spirit, Sergeant.'

'Bah,' Smythe grabbed hold of the agog Laudermilk and barged past the six interlopers without further comment, leaving a very high profile prisoner alone with a group of unauthorised strangers, at least one of whom was clearly armed -and what was more, he didn't give a tinker's damn either.

That was just how justice worked in Archades.

******

**Lanlet-Downe: Iona**

The tranquil forest was still; watchful but also sanguine. 'You speak in riddles hume.' Fran, seated on her downed log sat quietly and regarded the agitated hume male pacing before her with implacable steadiness. 'You mourn Fantl yet in your voice I hear blame.' She frowned. 'You would lay some measure of blame at mine and Balthier's door, yet you and Fantl both are strangers to us.'

'You don't understand!' Ethain, gripping his wild dark hair at the roots, whined pitifully teeth bared in a pantomime of torment that would make even the most overwrought mummer blush with shame. Fran remained unmoved.

'This I have said.' She pointed out calmly. 'And yet explanation you still refuse to grant.'

For a moment Fran wondered if this trying Hume man-child would continue to rant and rave and gnash his teeth in a parody of grief until the sun fell behind the horizon and night condensed amid the forest paths. She also wondered if perhaps she had found a being irritating enough to try even her legendary patience in this Ethain. Balthier no doubt would be amused to hear of such a thing.

'Alright,' After a few moments Ethain let go of his head and spoke once again in more normal tones. 'Alright - it's like this. Fantl, she was so alive, right? So vital and good and she just wanted so badly to be _just like you_! The sodding legendary Fran – that's what she called you. Said you were everything a Viera should be; proud and strong and capable, and not afraid to stand away from the Wood.'

Fran sucked in a quick, but silent breath of surprise and almost involuntarily her hand crept towards the pendent strung around her neck. She wondered if it was possible for this hume to know how his words tore at her like jagged stones. It took all Fran was not to flinch away from him as he continued on with his confession.

'You got to understand, the Viera here, they weren't like Viera on the main land. Fantl didn't really have a clue what life was like off this bleedin' island,' Ethain shook his head sadly. 'She had it in her 'ead that every Viera exile was just like you – and that every bloke was a bleedin' _Balthier_!' Bitterness had crept back into Ethain's voice now and once again he began to rake his fingers through his tangled hair in mounting agitation. 'She was bleedin' bonkers she was; sweet as the day is long, but bless her heart, Fantl weren't the sharpest knife in the rack.'

Fran arched a brow, 'Indeed?'

Ethain had the grace to look chagrined for defaming the dead, yet he did not recant the statement. Flapping a hand vaguely towards Fran he stared fiercely out into the dappled shadows of one of the woodland paths. 'Aye but who is the bigger fool in the end, eh? Her for being a bit touched or me for……' He stopped abruptly, as if a guillotine blade had just sliced in twain his words.

Fran tilted her head. 'For what? I can smell your guilt hume, and know I do that you wish to unburden yourself of some secret shame. What did you do to Fantl that you would confess such anger to me here and now?'

Ethain turned to her, expression wretched and face wane. He opened his mouth, his true confession on the tip of his tongue – but his earlier procrastination had cost him, for it was not he who answered but another.

'He lied and in so doing destroyed my dearest Fantl.'

A Viera materialised at the mouth of one of the shaded forest paths as if wrought by arcane forces (or at least she did to Ethain – Fran had already heard the approach of soft Viera footfalls). This Viera was paler in complexion than Fran herself and her hair a few shades darker, touched with gold where Fran's was white as Kerwon frost. Fran instantly recognised in this unknown Viera the touch of wisdom and grave authority, much as her own sister Jote wore about herself like an invisible cloak. Rising from her perch on the downed log Fran stood, moving almost protectively closer to the daft hume Ethain.

Watching with quietly gentle eyes reflecting the steady peaceful presence of the forest spirit the Viera nodded to Fran. 'Greetings sister Fran once of Golmore now of……,' the Viera paused and smiled faintly. 'Now of Ivalice at large. I am L'Moi of the Lanlet Viera. I bid you welcome.'

In turn Fran nodded deeply, almost a bow, and spoke in the Viera tongue. 'Thank you sister L'Moi of Lanlet; as my ears are long I will honour the peace and tranquillity of your home and the sanctity of the Wood and Way.' Once she had delivered the proper greeting in turn Fran switched to the common hume tongue of Ivalice. 'My tidings are ill; I come to bear news of the passing of your sister and to tell you her body now feeds the green grass and the wild winds of Cerobi.' Fran could scent the real and aching sorrow hidden behind L'Moi's seeming serenity and hesitated momentary before speaking the last bitter truth, 'As does the flesh of her unborn babe.'

L'Moi shuddered all over, eyes closing in pain so much more sincere than all Ethain's loud and over-blown gestures of grief. 'The Wood had told me thus,' L'Moi whispered soft as a falling leaf. 'Yet I……' the Viera's ears twitched and she looked up to meet Fran's regard. 'Fantl was flesh of my flesh; child of my womb.'

'I am sorry.' Fran said knowing the words were no recompense at all. She watched the other Viera carefully however, sensing the hidden violence therein. 'My heart would weep for you sister L'Moi, but this is a pain that I know not.'

L'Moi nodded solemnly, 'We know of your trails, sister, and your blessings. You are a beacon to those of the Viera who have not yet forgotten how to speak as well as listen.'

Fran was startled by this praise, both sincere and perplexing and thus was not quick enough to act in time. Too slow she could but watch as the bereft Viera turned her reddish eyes upon Ethain and something hard and furious crept up upon her lovely face. '_You_,' The Viera hissed. 'You are to blame; liar – deceiver! You killed my daughter!'

Ethain flinched back, almost cowering. 'No – I – it wasn't like that! I didn't mean……'

Then there were no more words for L'Moi had moved faster than thought to cross the clearing and wrap her long taloned hand around the hume's neck. L'Moi's other hand pulled back, claws poised to rip out Ethain's treacherous heart.

'I have waited for this moment hume,' L'Moi hissed in ice cold and feral sibilance, 'since the time you stole my daughter from me.'

******

**Archades Imperial Gaol:**

Alone and unsupervised in the guards break room Balthier relaxed idly back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his stomach, regarding the six people before him with mild interest.

'Vaan,' He nodded, 'Penelo.' He glanced at the foursome of students who had helped him escape Draklor after the partial collapse. Not particularly surprising considering his rotten memory for names (and tendency towards self-absorption) he realised at the last instant that he could not for the life of him remember a bleeding one of the little blighters' names, 'Ahem and……sundry others.'

At the crestfallen looks on the faces of the four students Balthier arched a brow. 'Well, well, one successful rescue and you presume I should remember your names, do you?'

'Master Balthier,' Nono's head poked up out of the flap in the backpack the tall, pale white and gold student wore on his back. A little wriggling later and the moogle was free to half leap and half flutter on stubby wings over to the table where he landed and looked up at his captain, master, and figure of unadulterated adoration with large and doleful liquid obsidian eyes. 'Master Balthier – you promised not to commit treason again!'

Balthier frowned testily, 'And I haven't.' Which was completely true; bribery yes, gambling in a government building – yes, contravening the code of conduct for prisoners – too bloody right he had, but he hadn't yet committed any infringement of the law that constituted treason, 'Yet.'

Looking away from Nono's chiding regard (and feeling obscurely like a naughty little boy caught with his hand in the confection jar) something occurred to Balthier after a moment. He frowned at Vaan and Penelo.

'By the by, what the bloody hell are you two doing in Archades?'

'Oh that's simple,' Penelo breezed across the room, pulling a potion bottle from her satchel. 'We were bringing the Strahl back to Draklor for her maintenance and……'

Balthier jerked as if someone had pinched him, 'You brought my bloody ship back to Draklor?' Mildly horrifying images of his beauty smothered in the rubble of the falling tower filled his mind. He glowered darkly. 'I presume my girl is still in good nick?' He said softly in tones that suggested strongly that any other answer but a resounding and reassuring yes would likely result in uncouth and considerable violence.

'Of course she is,' Penelo uncorked the potion bottle and plunked it down before him on the table. 'Are _you_ alright? You look pale.' The girl then proceeded to try and take his temperature with a hand to his brow. Irritably Balthier caught the offending appendage and pushed it away. 'Do you mind? I don't believe I am so decrepit as to require the services of a nursemaid.'

'Not yet,' Vaan muttered somewhat darkly as he slouched into one of the empty chairs around the card table. 'You promised to try not to get killed for at least a year.' He added a bit put out. Balthier narrowed his eyes.

'Why is it that everyone feels the need to remind me of various promises made, hm?' He asked somewhat rhetorically. 'More to the point, considering that I am in fact banged up for treason, why would anyone presume that I have a word of faith to keep in the first place?'

Vaan shook his head stubbornly, 'That's what you always say when things like this happen.'

Above and beyond all the sundry and varied trials and tribulations of his existence there was one peculiarity that forever confounded and dumbfounded Balthier. Primarily the delusion held by all manner of foes and allies alike that he possessed any redeeming qualities of loyalty, honour, or decency. The gods only knew he had done nothing whatsoever to encourage such ridiculousness – quite the reverse in fact. Yet the truly frustrating part was, despite the fact that _he _wasn't going around telling people he should be trusted or relied upon, the bloody fools kept expecting him to behave in a trustworthy and reliable fashion anyway. It was all the more maddeningly annoying when people who actually knew him (such as the Dalmascans), and, what is more, knew him to be the deliberately selfish, obstinate and fickle man he was, persisted to hold him to a standard no sane person should expect of him.

It was all bloody unfair.

'Right,' Balthier bit out succinctly after a moment silent stewing over various injustices, 'Enough of this nonsense. I believe I asked you a question, hm? What are you lot doing here?'

'We came to help you.' Penelo said easily lowering herself into the other chair around the table and opening her arms so Nono could sit in her lap. 'We heard about the assassination attempt, and then your arrest, and thought you might need us, especially with Fran gone,' she frowned curiously at Balthier. 'Where _is_ Fran? Someone told us she left the city before the quake.'

Balthier broke off his half-hearted battle of glares with his increasingly insubordinate subordinate and glanced at the golden haired girl. 'Conveniently enough she did.' He conceded. 'Viera business.'

'Viera business?' Suspicion did not sit well on Vaan's sunny features but he made a valiant effort all the same. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

Balthier arched a brow. If he didn't know better he might suspect Vaan had it in for him. Sullen and disagreeable was not an attitude Balthier intended to encourage in his alleged protégé and the brat was a trifle old for an adolescent rebellion.

'It means,' Balthier enunciated succinctly hoping that his tone indicated that he had had quite a day already and was not about to brook temper tantrums from uninvited guests, 'that Fran is away on business pertaining to the Viera. Really Vaan is the common tongue that hard for you to grasp?'

Losing interest in looking into Vaan's angry eyes (and having no desire to try and ascertain what the former sand urchin was upset about) Balthier dismissed the matter completely from his thoughts and regarded the group of students hovering near the door.

'Has consorting with the criminal element become the new fashionable pastime, or are you all so bereft of entertainment that you have decided to break into the Imperial gaol for a lark?'

'We're here to _help you_, Director.' The lone female of the group, the bright eyed one whom Balthier had stumbled upon atop Draklor under the rubble of most of the ceiling, stepped forward all a-quiver with earnestness. 'We're willing to commit treason if we have to.'

'Er…hang on a minute,' The blonde boy looked somewhat less willing to dare a future appointment with the final necktie and Balthier decided he might well be the brains of this foursome (which said precious little of merit for any of them). The small fat lad with the bouncy black curls scoffed derisively at his compeers but didn't immediately offer up either a word for or against the girl's sentiment. Balthier sighed.

'Marvellous,' pulling sharply on one of his cuffs and ignoring Penelo as she solicitously (and pointedly) pushed the potion bottle closer to him Balthier regarded his 'guests' with tired eyes. 'Had it not occurred to any of you that perhaps I have no desire for your help, hm?'

'You didn't want anyone to help you with the Phoenix either,' Vaan actually snapped, arms crossed defensively over his chest and cheeks hot with months of repressed anger, 'but you still needed it.'

Much like the crashing impact of a falling tower silence thundered down around the ears of the seven humes and one moogle in the room.

Balthier stopped fiddling with his cuff. Penelo froze in the process of petting Nono. The moogle himself abruptly stopped wallowing in the pleasure of said petting, and all eyes rooted upon Vaan. It was palpably evident that all was not well with the usually inanely good natured Rabanastran. The four students, as one, shuffled a few steps away from the table and closer to the only exit. Penelo bit her lip, praying that her partner knew what he was doing, even as she realised that hoping for such was incredibly foolish. Vaan meanwhile, both the epicentre and cause of the brewing storm, held Balthier's gaze with all his will and refused to back down in word or deed.

No one dared to breathe for a count of three pounding heartbeats.

Then Balthier's cold smile scythed across his face, baring teeth in a silent snarl. 'Pardon?' He asked with faux pleasantness. 'I don't believe I heard you correctly. Care to repeat that?' If words could cut Vaan would have been bleeding.

'You heard me,' the younger man said, stubborn challenge in every word. Huddled near the door, well aware that they were intruding upon a moment of great significance the nuances of which they could not hope to understand, the four students of the Cohort barely dared to blink as another, edged, silence caused the ambient temperature of the small stuffy guard room to drop noticeably.

Balthier stared at Vaan expressionless, his face hard as planed marble, heavy-lidded eyes growing as remote as the cloying mists of the feywood. He was suddenly and dangerously still, not so much as twitching a finger. Vaan stared back at him, equally still, equally unwavering. Penelo, caught in the crossfire, clutched Nono to her and tried not to draw any undue attention her way. Deep down she had known this had been coming for months. She'd known ever since Balthier had declared that anything to do with the Phoenix, and what had happened to him in Landis, completely off limits for further discussion. As far as Balthier was concerned the matter was in the past, and like the rest of his past, it was to be forever ignored.

As far as Vaan was concerned that just wasn't right; it wasn't even _fair_. Balthier had nearly died (had actually been mostly dead for three whole days). This wasn't like the Bahamut when he had merely pretended to be dead for a year. This time it had actually happened - and it had been by _his own hand_. That was the thing Vaan couldn't forgive. Balthier might die because someone proved to be clever enough, or more likely just lucky enough, to kill him and Vaan could accept that (though he would do his best to make sure it didn't happen) but the idea that Balthier had tried to kill himself, that made Vaan angry.

Reks had died and left Vaan alone in a world torn apart by war. Reks had died a slow, pitiful lingering death in silent agony and ignominy wasting away day by day - and all the while he had forced Vaan to watch, helplessly, as he did so. When his brother had died Vaan had truly thought no one (excepting Penelo who claimed an entirely separate part of his heart) would ever fill that void in him. Then he had met Balthier and Fran……and he had had a family again. Then, a little less than a year ago, he had almost lost it that family all over again.

The silence that had gathered like a smothering weight shattered when Balthier jerked into abrupt motion. He clicked his fingers, the sound as harsh as a rifle rapport.

'Out,' He barked at the four students before then turning to Penelo and Nono, 'That includes you two.' Turning back to Vaan Balthier's lips pursed into a single bloodless white line. 'I think Vaan has something he wants to say to me – and it does not require an audience.'

_A/N: Angry, assertive Vaan! Who'd have thunk it? This chapter went a little off on a tangent (Angry Vaan will not be denied) but I promise I am building up to some patented Spikey44 doesn't-stand-up-to-close-scrutiny plot twists in upcoming chapters. ;) _


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: Apologies everyone this is going to be a short update. I am experiencing MAJOR issues with my internet connection and wanted to get something posted while I could so this is sort of a partial chapter to tide things over while I pull my hair out trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with my laptop and/or wireless connection. Still Balthier spends the entirety of this chapter writhing in embarrassment and is forced into perhaps his most torturous experience to date: male bonding! – So that's something, right? ;) _

**Archades 708 O.V: Imperial Gaol**

A distressed Vaan was rather akin to a feathered fish; there was just something fundamentally wrong with the notion and when one found oneself confronted with such a specimen one's reaction, if one happened to be Balthier, was abject bemusement. It was like discovering a familiar household tool had suddenly developed the ability to think and feel – except a trifle more odd than that (Balthier had actually experienced the former – and Smith's existence was an easy pill to swallow compared to this).

He was being lectured on responsibility by _Vaan _of all people……Vaan! If it wasn't so utterly galling it would be hilarious.

The youth in question had risen from his chair almost as soon as Penelo and the others had scurried away from the guard room, only to start pacing like a caged bandercouerl back and forth, back and forth, in a highly aggravating manner. The simpleton's cheeks were flushed and his eyes suspiciously bright. Balthier scowled; at the first sign of tears he would be quit of this place. There was only so much a man should have to bear after all – and over-emotional Rabanastrans did not make that list.

'I just……' Vaan threw up his hands, pivoting as sinuously as an eel and stalking to one corner of the room before spinning around like a ricochet bullet bouncing off the wall. 'You were getting better! Even Fran said so! Now you've started up again and it's not fair Balthier. It's not fair!'

Blue eyes burned into him in a manner both beseeching and accusatory; this would have bothered Balthier except that he'd be _blowed_ if he could work out what the daft little bugger was on about. Evidently he was angry, and equally evident it seemed that Balthier was the target and cause of this uncharacteristic ire. This was fine. Balthier was used to ruffling feathers, albeit it was unusual to discover that Vaan's feathers _could_ be so ruffled. Still he usually at least had some notion of what he had done to invoke such a reaction. Alas as far as Balthier could recall he had never lied to, cheated, betrayed, or otherwise abused Vaan's trust, which was, now Balthier thought about it, frankly remarkable as he would be the first to admit that deceiving, cheating, and betraying close associates was something he was rather known for.

'Are you listening?' Vaan demanded abruptly.

'Yes.' Balthier replied promptly and just a little disingenuously; certainly he _had_ been listening to Vaan up until about a minute ago. Vaan just glared at him clearly unconvinced. Balthier sighed and flexed his fingers over the shoddily vanished table top. 'Out of curiosity, what precisely have I done lately to warrant all this vitriol?' He paused. 'Other than manage to avoid dying in an assassination attempt, that is.'

Vaan seemed vaguely appalled by this, 'Gods you really don't understand do you? I thought you were just being obtuse to, you know, try and annoy me into leaving you alone.' Vaan shook his head slowly. 'I think the fact that you don't even see it makes things worse.'

Alright this was getting ridiculous, and not even in a high farce deeply entertaining manner which would therefore allow Balthier room for amble mockery. '_What?_' He snapped. 'What are you bloody wittering on about boy!' Hot on the heels of this exclamation of frustration something else occurred to him……'And since when do words such as "obtuse" escape your tongue?'

Vaan's expression went from forlorn to deeply earnest, 'I learned from you.'

Balthier winced. Good gods, there were methods of torture more pleasurable than this. 'Lovely.' He almost spat. 'So you are furious with me for lifting you out of the dull-drums of ignorance, hmm?'

There was another moment wherein Vaan stubbornly refused to be baited and instead seemed intent on glaring at Balthier with such intensity that should it be possible to bludgeon another living being with heartfelt sentiment Balthier would be black and blue already. 'No. I've never been sorry to learn from you.' The boy said with more earnest sincerity than Balthier had thought possible to infuse into such a short sentence. This was _intolerable! _

'Right,' Balthier bit out. 'Well if that is all, I have a senator to see about a treason charge so……' he made to rise from his chair.

'Don't!' Vaan didn't shout yet that one word snapped through the room sharp as an Imperial drill sergeant's command. Quite despite himself Balthier froze mid-motion and then warily sank back into his chair, eyes narrowed and watchful.

'Excuse me?' He all but purred, thoughts shifting towards a decidedly vengeful bent. Gods above couldn't Vaan just stab him in the back like a decent pirate? Bugger it Balthier had loathed his own sky pirate master but he had still had the common compassion to just murder the man rather than harangue him at length for his many failings.

'I said don't,' Vaan repeated his previous command calmly. 'I'm not done talking to you.'

Balthier closed his eyes and wondered whether should he choose now to send out a deeply heartfelt and newly devout silent plea to Faram would the deity in question answer? Then again said deity was presently out to kill him so it was conceivable the sodding god had set this whole farce up in a fit of divine wrath; bloody clever of him if he had. Sighing in defeat Balthier flapped his hand imperiously. 'Go on.'

Vaan scrunched his brow, 'Is there any point?'

The fact that the challenge was posed in a tone of pure petulance did not completely diminish its potency. Balthier hitched one shoulder in a shrug (which pulled his stitches uncomfortably). 'Only you can answer that. I will say however that a man ought put up or shut up.' Narrowing his eyes Balthier bared his teeth in a savage grimace. 'The choice is yours.'

Vaan nodded jerkily and then slumped down in the chair he had previously vacated in favour of a great deal of unnecessary prowling about. 'You almost died and I don't think,' the boy hesitated and tried another tact. 'I think you're trying to run away again, except that you haven't got any place left to run to. I think what happened with the Phoenix scared you because you couldn't hide from the truth.'

Oh for goodness sake! Balthier resisted the desire to lunge across the table and start throttling Vaan. This was primarily because such an action would only aggravate his stitches, and secondly because Vaan had a point; the Phoenix had scared him. Then again dying was no laughing matter. Nevertheless Balthier saw no reason to admit to this, especially not in the presence of a subordinate.

'Truth is a somewhat nebulous concept Vaan. Unless we are speaking of natural law or basic arithmetic I somewhat suspect our interpretation of what contributes "truth" will vary.'

Vaan skewed him with a lethal look. 'You tried to kill yourself; happy people don't do that.'

Shifting in his chair Balthier winced slightly as the movement tugged again on his stitches; stiffness from lack of activity was beginning to set in. Eyeing the potion bottle Penelo had left on the table in front of him Balthier wondered if he could force Vaan to get to the point before he his general discomfit won out and he drank the potion. The last thing Balthier wanted to do was concede weakness in front of an underling who clearly didn't know his place.

'There were extenuating circumstances,' Balthier kept his eyes rooted to the potion bottle. 'I was somewhat possessed at the time.'

'And you stabbed yourself through the heart with a Deathbringer sword. You let yourself get possessed because you didn't tell anyone – even Fran – that it was happening.' Vaan pushed on relentlessly.

Balthier glowered, 'What's your point?'

'You tried to _kill_ yourself,' Vaan repeated this point, which he obviously thought was central to his argument. He placed particular emphasis on the words as his hands curled into fists on the table top. 'Did you even think about any of us at all? Did you think once about what you dying would do to Fran? You were just……you were going to abandon us.'

Balthier blinked, _ah so _that _was_ _the problem, was it? _The phantom of Vaan's ill-fated brother had reared his head once more. Balthier, who over the course of his acquaintance with his sort-of apprentice-come-crewmember-come protégé had learned more than he ever wanted to know about Reks – and Vaan's deep emotion wounds regarding his elder brother's somewhat less than well thought out decision to join the Dalmascan army just as the country was plunged into a war it had no hope of winning, thus leaving his younger brother completely alone to suffer life under occupation in near crushing poverty. All in all Balthier felt that of the two Vaan had been the brains in their family and this was one of the main tenets in his belief that Vaan should be prohibited from breeding future generations of idiots. Still having spent rather a lot of time fixating on his own less than cheery relationship with his now deceased father the more charitable side of Balthier's nature could at least sympathise with Vaan for his loss – at least in the most general of senses.

Not right now however – and especially not when it appeared the boy was daring to draw comparisons between he and Reks. Balthier was not about to settle for any of that nonsense.

Focusing on Vaan completely for the first time since this whole difficult conversation had begun Balthier spoke the words he had thought never to need to elucidate. 'I'm not your brother Vaan.'

'I know that.' Vaan snapped hotly yet wouldn't meet Balthier's eyes. 'This isn't about Reks!' He told the table top.

'All the same,' Balthier continued in a slightly more magnanimous tone while ignoring Vaan's last vehement outburst because it was blatantly untrue. 'I can appreciate that my demise would be distressing for you – I am not precisely thrilled with how matters progressed during that time either.' Balthier took a breath. 'If it is any consolation having attempted, and failed, to commit suicide while under the influence of a malign spiritual being, I can say with full confidence that the thought of doing away with myself in the future has lost all appeal.'

'But people are still trying to kill you.' Vaan argued finally looking up.

Balthier rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in exasperation. 'People are always trying to kill me.' He stated succinctly. If he had come to accept that a fair proportion of all the people he had met in his adult life would at some point try to murder him then Vaan bloody well ought to as well! 'People were trying to kill me before the Phoenix came along as well. In fact there were people trying to kill at the same junction in time that _I_ was trying to kill me - and we all failed! Bloody hell Vaan what more assurance do you want that death is not in my personal forecast than that?'

'Well,' Vaan thought about this a moment. 'When you put it like that……'

'Hm,' Balthier pressed on hoping to end this gods' be damned and monstrously turgid conversation once and for all. 'Fran has a theory that I may be almost completely immune to magick and Mist as well. Ergo the methods one can employ to kill me have been drastically reduced.' Balthier paused in thought and then added meditatively. 'If I was a trifle more inclined to megalomania like the old man, one might even assume I was approaching near deification.'

'But do you get it?' Vaan interrupted such thoughts urgently, although he did sound a tad less overwrought. 'Do you understand why I hate when you do things like this? You're not Reks, I _know that_……but you're – you and Fran – you've given me and Penelo so much. You taught me to fly, you gave us the Strahl, but more than that you've given to me, or helped me gain, everything I needed to become the sort of person I wanted to be but didn't think I could be.' Vaan pressed his lips together. 'Even when I totally disagree with you, even when you do things that show all your bad points – I'm still learning from you – and you're still teaching me, even if you won't admit that's what you're doing.'

Earnest eyes beseeched him for understanding and some manner of returned sentiment that was simply beyond Balthier. 'You're not just some character in a play that can strut on and off a stage without anyone caring after. Whether you like it or not – you're not alone anymore.'

Balthier closed his eyes and swallowed back a groan. Where was a vindictive semi-divine being with a penchant for inducing suicide when he needed one? Balthier pinched the bridge of his nose and forced the words out.

'Yes Vaan I do _get_ it.' He told him tiredly.

Balthier knew what Vaan wanted – he just didn't understand the necessity of verbalising the bleeding obvious. Simple logic dictated that a man as selfish as Balthier undoubtedly was would not spend as much time teaching, guiding, protecting and simply tolerating the company of people like Vaan and Penelo if he did not in fact _like _the bloody brat and his pig-tailed paramour a great deal. What Balthier did not understand therefore was why _Vaan could not make this simple deductive leap on his own and therefore save them both from this horrendous experience in male bonding._

Without opening his eyes Balthier tilted his head back towards the ceiling and recited in stilted monotone. 'You are my……friend Vaan. I am……grateful that you were there for Fran during my brief demise. I do not think you are truly as idiotic as general consensus would have it, and I assure you that the next time I am feeling either possessed or suicidal I shall mention it in passing before enacting any ill-thought out or death-inviting actions.' Opening his eyes again Balthier was close to beseeching himself. 'Now can we never speak of this again?'


	16. Chapter 16

_A/L: Sigh finally manage to get the internet connection sorted and real life gets in the way so I can't update (grrr!) Sorry for the delay in updating folks. Also warning for Lente related insanity and gratuitous violence towards defenceless octopi. ;)_

**708 0.V: By the Seashore**

She is singing a lullaby to the babies never to be born; she is singing a dirge for the homes never built and the harmony squandered. She is licking the blood of dead men from her fingers as the sand bites her toes and the tidal surf erodes the shore.

'Hush my children……mother will make things right……'

There is a coastal inlet and a cave and within that cave there lies a sleeping beast, kin to the destroyer, a leveller and an abomination; she will raise the beast just like the last. She will call the ocean's rage to her whim and she will wash away the rot. Ivalice has birthed generation after generation of ignorant, heedless children, all of them selfish, greedy, broken creatures. They have forgotten everything that was once important and they do not care.

'…And I shall pluck their eyes from their sockets like blackberries and they shall be sweet as ashes; blind they will follow and I shall make them see as I do.'

Lente will teach them, oh yes. When the flood retreats and the mountains are naught but rubble she will sit within the ruins and teach once more. Lente smiles through the old blood and the new blood that wreathes her once beautiful face. Now skin has given way to a cracked and parched mask of scarlet ichor over her face; a mask that breaks asunder with her smile. The children will come to her again, and she will teach them anew, and then she will pinch the still beating hearts from their breasts and swallow them whole, lest the children grow to know the pain of heartbreak.

'Come little children,' she sings as sweet as any dawn chorus, 'mother has the answers you seek.'

Let tomorrow die so that paradise may be reclaimed.

* * *

**Lanlet-Downe; Iona**

In the eyeblink of time it took for L'Moi to lunge at Ethain, clasp him around the throat, and throw him bodily against the trunk of the nearest tree Fran was in motion herself. Rage and grieving madness gave L'Moi strength but not skill; Fran who had for years honed her body into a weapon none but she could master, smoothly stepped between the bereft mother and the alleged killer.

'Stop,' With one hand out, palm forward in the universal gesture: come no further, Fran placed herself between the hume wretch and the wild Viera. L'Moi's sinewy body twitched, ears quivering, eyes narrowed to bloody slits. 'You would protect this hume from me; I who am mother to she that lies dead because of this one's treachery?'

Fran met L'Moi's rage soaked eyes calmly as an errant breeze sweet as spring water twirled through the loose threads of her hair. 'Yes.' She said for nothing else but truth was answer enough in such times as these. All the same her next words were soft, more plea than a threat of intimidation. 'I do not wish to harm you, but I shall if I must.'

Behind Fran's back the damnable hume struggled half upright grasping for Fran's leg as wet coughs wracked broken ribs. 'Please, Faram take me, don't let her kill me!'

Resisting the urge to shake the clinging hume from her leg, both because his grasping hands would impede her ability to adequately defend them both should L'Moi attack but also because she did not like this hume touching her, Fran instead shifted minutely letting her breath ease from her lungs almost imperceptibly. All around her she could hear, feel, smell, and taste the forest weeping. Such violence was not welcome in this place – and Fran was loathe to disrespect the will of the forest by shedding Viera blood.

Perhaps sensing the Woods distress or finding some semblance of her own inner calm L'Moi shifted her stance from one of murder to merely one of hurt and anger; no less potent but at least marginally less dangerous for the time being. 'Why?' The mother asked the barren exile.

'Because I brought this hume here,' Fran said simply in the Vieran tongue. 'His life is mine within these ways of soil and bough, and so too are his trespasses. These are our ways, are they not sister?'

'He killed my Fantl.' L'Moi insisted and her vehemence was not Viera, not of the Wood's chosen children who gladly gave their own offspring to the Wood to raise alone. Fran cocked her head to the side thoughtfully as she considered the Viera before her alive with naked pain. This would never be so in Golmore for such an indulgence of selfish maternal expression would not be dreamed of in Eruyt. No, the Viera of Eruyt had no concept of such bonds as mother to daughter. Fran had been raised from infancy knowing only countless sisters and never once had she known which of the elder Viera had given birth to she and Jote until Fran had witnessed the birth of Mjrn. Now Fran stared into the face of a mother's pain and thought how very……_hume_ L'Moi did seem.

'Fantl's own hand did murder Fantl,' Fran spoke slowly feeling her way along uncertain territory and acutely aware of the hume in questions plucking fingers clawing in panic at her calf.

'It takes more than a hand to murder; life can be taken from more than just flesh alone, sister.' L'Moi pressed her voice bloodless and yet somehow choked with the blood that no longer pumped in her daughter's veins. 'My daughter's soul did this one murder with his lies and petty vanity.'

Fran cocked her head to the side pondering this assertion. 'This hume speaks of love when he speaks of Fantl.' Fran said once more as careful as one treading over a thin skein of blue ice, ice that could shatter into a hundred thousand rapier shards to tear apart a heart. L'Moi shuddered as if she felt those icy shards rending her aching breast.

'Yes,' the Lanlet Viera all but hissed, 'And therein the lie, the poison; therein Lente's burden damns us all.'

* * *

**At the Seashore:**

She found the carcass of a crab, half eaten and stinking, which she clutched to her breast as a mother would a new born babe. She speared a silvered fish with her long clawed fingers from the shallows and snatched clam shells from the rock pools along the shoreline. The creatures of the sea would listen to her story.

'Once there was a Viera and once there was a hume man. She was wise and he was brave. Her word was the Law of the Wood and the Ways and he was a king of men. To war he went in her name and the Wood and the Way his banners did proclaim.'

The blood mask began to drip away as salt tears sought to join the ocean spray; like a broken doll, or a marionette with broken strings, Lente sat as dead as stone amid the tidal pools and slippery stones. Kelp bound her ankles and sand clung to the crevices between her fingers. Her words, her story, she told to the blue on blue horizon.

'Once Ivalice was as she was supposed to be. The Nu Mou to steward the past, the Helgas to observe tomorrow in dreams left unspoken, the Moogles to build and the Viera to know. We four first children of Ivalice, a unity of disparity; a comingling of difference; Viera and Helgas, Nu Mou and Moogle, we were the first balance. Yet our mother Ivalice left her beautiful Viera incomplete. Greatest of her children, to us she gave the ear to listen and the mouth to speak her wisdom – yet Viera left alone are merely half alive – for there can be no answer without first a question.'

A single perfect blood tear crashed from the curve of a smooth curved cheek and was lost forever in the froth of salt lapping the sands as Lente's head bowed against the grief that all Viera know. Her claws rent the rotted flesh of the crab to shreds in a vicious parody of motherly affection and her words were the most bitter of curses:

'Daughters we Viera all – and yet not a one among us ever a son.'

* * *

**Archades:**

'I still can't believe no one even _tried_ to stop us.' Penelo marvelled as she, Vaan, Balthier and the foursome of Draklor students (plus Nono – now back in the backpack where he could maintain a semblance of innocence, or at least remain incognito) strolled out of the Imperial Gaol and into the sharp bite of early morning air. 'I mean I know Larsa and Basch would let you escape; they only put you in there for appearance – but still……' Penelo shivered as she tried to frame her thoughts, 'Shouldn't they have at least made the effort to pretend to stop us?'

'Whatever for?' Balthier was also accosted by the sudden chill as he took his first breath of freedom, flexed his fingers before blowing on his knuckles as he surveyed his surroundings. 'Had anyone attempted such a thing you or Vaan would have felt compelled to defend me and we'd have had a bloody massacre on our hands. This way is much better all around.'

'I still don't understand why Larsa put you in there in the first place.' Vaan pointed out not yet past his sudden swerve towards petulant assertiveness. 'I mean I get the whole Balthier's being framed let's play along until the real villain reveals themselves game – but, I mean, it just seems sort of,' the youth paused, '……trite,' He concluded after a moment running through the entries within the mental thesaurus he had absorbed somewhere.

Balthier eyed him sceptically. 'Hmm.' Surprisingly tired considering all he'd done most of the day was play cards, bribe prison guards and be subjected to angry tirades from concerned associates Balthier actually had to take a moment to consider his objectives. 'Politics is trite, Vaan, and I'm fairly certain that his lordship and the right honourable Gabranth had less to do with the ridiculous ease with which we made our "escape" – if one can call walking out of the front gates of a prison an _escape_ -than did the fact that the poor sods playing turnkey have more sense, and not enough of a basic wage, to try and stop a prisoner with an armed escort from escaping whenever he damn well pleases.'

The sky was just pinking to the east, the sun rising lethargically behind the needle like spires of Archades' highest reaches. As he breathed deeply of the sleepy dawn the stitches across Balthier's side twanged yet again. He frowned; bloody religious zealots and their moral superiority. Of course that reminded him, the delightful harpy Madrigalise Etteran generally sequestered herself away at her Saraches country estate when the senate was not in session. Balthier decided that paying a social call to her ladyship madam senator was very much in order – even if it was four in the morning. He didn't have the time or the inclination for these games of couerl and mouse after all. He had bloody _work_ to do in Draklor.

'Mister Director, sir?' Awkwardly clearing her throat Selphie Gainsborough broke from the student huddle, which had been standing a little away from the three bona fide sky pirates (to give the illusion that they were not eavesdropping avidly and taking copious notes) and now spoke up to address her director, whom just so happened to be the object of her personal adoration.

Balthier sighed – and here was yet another complication he did not need. He would have to ask Fran when she returned if she knew when and how he had accidentally gained a group of rabid disciples. 'Balthier,' he corrected automatically. 'I don't require a title; I have more than enough of them as is.'

(Which was no less than the truth; it was almost laughable how much of a tizzy his preferred moniker gave the darling bureaucrats of the Empire. To this day they still dithered over whether to refer to him as Ffamran Balthier, or Balthier Ffamran. And as for that nonsense about his Bunansa inherited honorific – well!)

'Oh, yes, whatever you wish s…er…Balthier.' Selphie smiled tremulously and plucky girl that she was (damn her) forged ahead all the same. 'We,' she flapped her hands behind her to gesture at the three boys at her back, 'were wondering sir…er, _Balthier_……why do you keep mentioning visiting a senator? Surely that would be a bad thing to do when you've just escaped government captivity?'

Vaan laughed then, the sound abrupt and jarring in the idling dawn quiet. Penelo, who had more respect for ambience usually, found herself fighting with a grin. Balthier just felt tired. He opened his mouth to say something inconsequential and inane but Vaan beat him to it.

(Then again the boy was a past master when it came to the asinine and pointless, so that was hardly surprising).

'Not for Balthier it isn't,' Vaan explained expansively and seeming in much improved spirits. He grinned hugely before continuing. 'I remember this one time, we were all on a job in Rozzaria; this was after Dalmasca was liberated and we'd sorted out that Judge of Wings. Anyway we ended up getting ambushed by the Margrace private guard.' Vaan's grin grew fond and nostalgic. 'We beat them of course, but one of them managed to stab Fran in the thigh with a poison spear and Balthier carried her right up to the Margrace branch house in the city and demanded that their healer fix her leg right then.'

'Oh for the gods' own sake!' Balthier almost groaned in annoyance and it was reflex to cuff the idiot around the back of the head. 'We do not have time for idle reminiscence.' The damage was done however. He could see it in the eyes of the four students in front of him. Fran would _not_ be pleased with him.

'Really? You really did that; didn't they arrest you?' Selphie's eyes were wide and glowing as she looked up at Balthier with a mixture of disbelief and delight. The Director's irreverence and complete lack of interest in social hierarchy or even international diplomacy was well known but even so the thought that Director Bunansa could be quite so arrogant and get away with it lit a fire in the young girl's heart.

'You're incredible,' the girl breathed out in awe. Balthier did his best not to cringe.

Marvellous just ruddy, sodding, bloody, _bastardly_ _marvellous_; Balthier may have set himself up as a legend but he had no desire to be anyone's hero. Thanks to Vaan he was going to have a bugger of a time getting rid of these children now.

'There were extenuating circumstances.' He said shortly hoping terse words would cut dead unwanted idol worship. Trying not to scowl (because he was still vain enough not to want to spoil his performance even though it was the performance that had caused this mess in the first place) he cleared his throat sharply. 'In any regard, this is not business that concerns the four of you. So you had best be off.' He flapped his hands for added emphasis, almost like one trying to wave away a pair of shackles, or shoo an insect out of his immediate vicinity. True this sort of unconscionable rudeness had failed to deter the Rabanastrans once upon a time but, well, these children were Archadian and surely they at least would get the bloody message?

'But!' The girl sputtered. 'We're here to help you.'

Evidently the message was not well received. Balthier had a moment to consider what Fran would say about all this. The visualisation exercise gave him chills. Before Balthier's eyes it seemed as if he looked not at four distinct but undoubtedly stupid individuals but instead into a foursome of _Vaans_. Gods damn it the last thing he wanted was to adopt any more insipid children.

(Fran would eviscerate him for this.)

'Delightful,' he gritted out eventually swallowing down a mouthful of less dignified epithets. He tried to mould his tone to one of cool civility but ended up sounding merely irritated. 'And you have been most helpful. Once this awkward business of assassination and alleged treason has been sorted out I'll be sure to let your akademy tutors know what exemplary conduct you have demonstrated.'

Selphie's green eyes narrowed to copper flame slits, and as she was evidently the spokesperson for the group, she was the one who spoke the dreaded words Balthier did not want to hear. 'We're prepared to commit treason for you _sir_.'

(Ah yes indeed – Fran was going to _annihilate_ him. In fact there doubtless did not exist in the spoken tongue the words for what she would do to him if he allowed these daft brats to break Imperial law on his behalf.)

'Right lovely; that's very nice,' Balthier swallowed around the knot of irritation lodged in his throat. 'Vaan, Penelo – a word if you will?' He contrived to smile his tightest, most closed lipped smile as he crooked a finger towards the two fair haired Rabanastrans. These two had brought the children along with them in the first place. It was their ruddy duty to get rid of them!

Penelo and Vaan for their part both swallowed hard, looked into the dark gleam in Balthier's eyes, and then, with great reluctance and no little wariness stepped forward.

Whatever _word _Balthier wanted to have with them it was not going to be pleasant.

* * *

**Lanlet-Downe:**

'Love,' L'Moi spat, 'and the promise of greatness; those are the lies the humes always tell.' Clawed fingers jab at the air, and downward to the dark soil and the mulch strewn undergrowth that Ethain sort to hide within in. 'This feckless child, this mangy cur – he betrayed my daughter when he took her heart from me……from mother Wood!'

Standing firm in the face of inconsolable rage Fran spoke the words of dispassionate truth and a pain she knew all too well. 'Lest he stole her by force, then it be that Fantl made her own choice.' Fran hesitated and then spoke the old mantra, the declaration of her own betrayal. 'Viera begin in the Wood but it is not the only Way for us.'

'For you,' L'Moi all but howled. 'For you there is world enough and Way to walk the paths of men. For you are strong and walk a path that few would envy to gain that which we all would die for, sister - _but my daughter was not as you are_! And this child is not as your hume!'

Fran blinked as once again a veiled, elusive jibe was thrown her way, but no, not just towards her, but at Balthier as well. Oddly irked by this and confused by the suggestion that any Viera still sheltered by a loving wood should envy her situation in Fran spoke perhaps a trifle incautiously.

'You speak with envy's forked tongue sister. Whatever this hume's faults,' _and Fran was certain they were legion_, 'With him did Fantl do what most Viera cannot. She conceived of a child. Would you disparage the gift your daughter was given simply because you cannot condone her choice?'

For the first time L'Moi looked at Fran and not the snivelling hume cowering behind her back. 'Yes sister, I can.' The older Viera drew in a breath and Fran felt the soothing will of the forest rise up to fortify the other Viera as she exhaled. 'Fantl knew her mistake, with this knowledge she killed the babe in her womb as she took her own life for she knew this hume was unworthy. We Viera are born incomplete, yet we must balance need with wisdom. This is what Lente taught us when she fell from grace. To do else is to let the humes destroy us just as Raithwall destroyed Lente.'

Fran was unsure why but something in those words made her shiver to the very marrow of her bones. 'Lente,' she whispered soft as a falling leaf. 'Lente who loved Raithwall and was forsaken, for all she could bare him were Viera daughters and not the hume son he craved.'

* * *

**At the Seashore:**

'Why mother, why create your daughter Viera in your image but leave us so unfinished? We are but a single note lost without a melody; we are an answer that craves a question yet knows that to answer is to be lost. Why did you curse your chosen so?'

They came to Lente with the tide, inexorable and inevitable; the silvered fish and the armoured crabs bound in barnacled chains of slime green weed dredged from the bubbling surf. Lente's tears fed the salt in the ocean and the ocean rewarded her sorrow; from the depths they came and another seal lay broken.

'The humes were to be our gift,' crack, crack, crack strong hands and brutal claws tore the pincers from silently screaming crabs one by one in quick succession. Angry fingers gouged out the flat eyes of choking fish and soon the ocean froth bubbled pinkish red. 'The humes were the question we could answer; short lived, born in blind ignorance, they were to come to us – and from them Viera would flourish. Was this not your will mother?'

A hundred thousand eggs burst like jellied pearls from the torn guts of a trout as Lente threw the spasming carcass behind her back to land heavy and wet on the sandy shore. Yet with every push of the ocean tides more creatures of the shallows and the deep found themselves unwilling sacrifices to Lente's madness.

'Yet now the covenant is broken; Raithwall the betrayer has spawned a million brutish sons, and the humes wage war upon you great mother. Was this your will? Was it your will to see your daughters thrown aside to wither in darkness?'

A brilliant and fantastical octopus, vibrant in shades of glaring red and indigo blue ruptured like over ripe fruit in a spurting shower of black-blue ink as Lente tore soft tissue into chunks and rained down destruction in the needle strikes of crimson weeping nails. She could no longer give life in this Ivalice of the humes; she could no longer teach her children, her sister Viera, when they had lost the will to listen. She could no longer find balance in a world that had forgotten that balance was necessary to live.

So instead she would kill; she would rend, tear, crush, break, and destroy all that was. She would bleed the humes dry; she would tear their liar gods from their mighty pedestals and she would silence the question once and for all.

Damn them all, these hume sons of Raithwall. They were so many and so cruel yet she was a daughter of the Viera and child of mother Ivalice. She would make all Ivalice as empty and hollow as the Viera now were.

She was Lente and this was her burden.


	17. Chapter 17

**708 O.V. A Secret Location Somewhere in Kerwon**

Gran Kiltias Marana did not look up from her collection of shiny marbles. In fact she appeared quite enraptured by the perfectly spherical coloured glass balls; she particularly enjoyed the clink-clink noise they made when she flicked one marble into another and they rolled all over the floor.

Marana had not slept a wink since she and her coterie of loyal disciples had escaped Mount Bur-Omisace. This would be disturbing for a normal child but for the Gran Kiltias, whom depended on dreams for her prophecy, this was a cataclysmic turn of events – and if the Gran Kiltias herself was somewhat blasé about the matter, well her fellow servants of Faram were more than upset enough to make up for it.

Hiding behind the stringy lengths of her thin pale hair the child prophet grinned gleefully in the face of their discomfort. It was fun when the adults panicked so. Poor souls they had no idea how ridiculous they were.

They did not know what Marana knew – and she thought they would be happy in their ignorance, except of course that they could know how very lucky they were.

'Your Reverence?' Ai Vehula, given over to a kiltias monastery at age five, raised to be a handmaiden to Faram all her life, stepped forward to approach their revered leader as she squatted on the cold stone floor of this subterranean hidey-hole with her marbles and her smiling secrets. Instead of answering her polite interruption the prophet child flicked a bright orange marble the size of a small bird's egg across the floor with enough force to make it skip over the rough ground.

'We have received a report from our agent in Archades your Reverence,' Ai cleared her throat awkwardly stuttering to an uncomfortable verbal halt. Speaking with Marana was not like Anastasis; at least with the former Gran Kiltias you could be sure that when he was listening he was truly listening and not playing silly childish games. (The fact that Marana was in fact a child and thus entitled to play childish games was one glossed over by the Kiltias – to think too hard on that would make them question the morality of exploiting a child for her visions). 'It would appear that…..'

'That the laughing pirate is still alive and now suspicious of the Kiltias.' Marana finished for Ai, snickering while still crouched on the ground, more like a feral animal - hair wild and knotted and skinny knees filthy –than a revered and exalted religious leader. 'Silly plan; can't kill the pirate. Only the pirate can kill the pirate and the Viera won't let that happen again.' Finally looking up at Ai (who took an involuntary step back as the child grinned her savage grin) Marana pranced to her feet and danced a few steps away, giggling as she kicked her marbles all over the place.

'All the same your Reverence,' Ai said carefully, 'was it not your decree to ensure the pirate was - indisposed – during this time of upheaval? Should we not be worried that the pirate might have reason to suspect us?'

Marana, who had started spinning around and around on the points of her toes, arms above her head and spine bowed so her hair trailed almost to the ground, stopped abruptly in mid-motion and erupted in wild giggles.

'Silly-billy Ai; silly, silly, silly Ai.' The girl sing-songed in grating soprano, 'You don't know anything, you only see with your eyes.' Deciding that standing still was not to her liking the girl launched herself clumsily into the air in a manner both profoundly graceful and decidedly awkward.

'But the pirate and agent Etteran……' Ai began already knowing it was a lost cause. Marana was a better prophet than Anastasis had ever been, yet alas, there were few alive who could understand her enough to decipher her predictions. Ai, in her less charitable moments, rather suspected that the girl was simply mad.

Marana danced to the back of the huge chamber and threw herself with childish abandon into the makeshift throne waiting for her. Eyes glittering from behind a trailing veil of tangled hair she smiled her strange and bittersweet smile before closing her eyes to dream at last.

'It's time to wake the Sleeper.' The girl whispered as she faded into dreams. Ai sucked in a harsh breath, lungs contracting painfully.

'No……' she breathed out. 'You cannot……that is forbidden. The Colossus cannot be awakened.'

The sleeping child on her too large throne of cold and unfeeling stone smiled beatifically, 'Too late.'

Then it happened, all around and from above and below, a sound like the workings of the largest clockworks in all imagining ground into sudden, ponderous life; the entire chamber shuddered. Ai clasped a hand to her breast and squeezed her eyes closed in fervent prayer.

'Faram forgive us.' She whispered and somewhere beyond the chamber walls the last Colossus awoke.

* * *

**Archades:**

It had been said before and it would be said again; the Bunansa family had always had a knack for breeding genius. It was also a truth absolute that prodigious genius did not naturally lend itself to much common sense and thus was the downfall of the great Bunansa line; sooner or later genius bred instability, insanity or sheer reckless disregard for life and limb. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the last two generations of Bunansa scions. Cidolfus Bunansa had turned himself into a monster simply because it had never occurred to him that just because he _could_ conceive of a project and make it a reality did not mean that _he should _go ahead and turn himself into a living god. For a Bunansa there was no "should I" after all, only "I can therefore I shall"_. _Ffamran Bunansa, Archades greatest prodigal son and more than likely the last Bunansa there ever would be, was generally a rather close chip off the old demented block, even if the thought of comparing himself to his father still made him wince a little on the inside. True he lacked his father's penchant for megalomania, but generally speaking, the last Bunansa tended to behave like a law onto himself, barely bothering to consider such tedious eventualities as the consequences of one's actions.

Myopia thy name is Bunansa…

…but not always.

Sometimes fate is a strange thing. Death, near death, and the precipice of despair had barely tarnished the surface of Balthier's indomitable conviction that he was always right (and if he wasn't strictly speaking always right he was at the very least never in the wrong). Balthier had spent his entire adult life charging headlong from one exciting diversion to another without ever really doubting himself for any spell longer than the time it took to fall off a purvama. Certainly he had never second guessed his decisions until _after_ they had blown up in his face (on occasion literally as well as figuratively). Therefore there really was no reason why Balthier, now hurtling along the dawn draped streets of the Imperial Capital (having cannily foisted his annoying acolytes off on a less than impressed Penelo for the time being) stopped quite abruptly in his tracks.

'Oomph,' Vaan blurted out as he ran into Balthier's back. He had been haring along behind his friend and mentor for the last twenty minutes on much shorter legs and wasn't quite fast enough to stop his own forward momentum. 'Why have we stopped?' He asked when it became apparent Balthier was not just stopping to gain his bearings. The other man did not answer, too busy with his own thoughts.

Archades was a city that never really slept. The slums of Old Archades were still as riddled with activity in the dead of night, much like a flea ridden blanket, as it was under the distant sun – perhaps more so considering how lethargic the Vulgars often seemed slouching in alleys during the daylight hours. Likewise the highest echelon of the city still buzzed under the cold stars with a thousand political schemes long after anyone with any sense (ergo most certainly not a politician) had retired for the night. All the same there was something about the magical time between night and day, that tiny window between dawn's early light and true daybreak that created a deep and slumbering lull around the city, offering Archades an aura of tranquillity that it neither deserved nor desired.

In this moment of reflective calm Balthier stopped on his hurried way to hail a sky cab straight to Etteran's estate……and thought again.

'Hey Balthier - are you even listening to me?' Vaan had been talking since they had stopped moving, and while Balthier knew that on some level he also knew that he hadn't heard a word the youth had to say.

'Not even remotely,' he admitted honestly as his eyes focused on the lop-sided silhouette of the half collapsed Draklor tower beautifully backlit against a blushing pink and pale orange sky. He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

'Vaan?' Balthier asked without looking at his compatriot.

'Yeah?' Although he sounded a trifle annoyed that Balthier still wasn't really listening to the things he said Vaan still remained willing to listen to him instead. Balthier suspected there was a lesson to be learned in that.

'If someone told you they intended to leash and tame you what assumption would you make about that?' He asked walking over to one of the railings along the street overlooking the drop-off down to the Saraches River. On a clear day from this elevation it was possible to see far out across the T'chita Uplands from here. Balthier who had seen the whole of the uplands sweep along below him from the cockpit of his Strahl many times before focused instead on his own fingers curling around the railings.

'Uh – what?' Vaan ambled over to assume a relaxed pose similar to Balthier's own resting against he railing.

'I know that Senator Etteran is behind the recent conspiracy against me,' Balthier explained with surprising patience. 'She has threatened my person in a round about manner more than once, and she is the one responsible for releasing the man who tried to kill me.' Balthier pursed his lips. 'Causality might therefore suggest that she was also the one who commissioned the man to kill me in the first place, or at the very least, aided him in his attempt.'

'Right,' Vaan nodded. 'That's why we're going to go confront her.'

Balthier smiled humourlessly. 'No, that's why _we_ are going to do no such thing.'

'What?' Vaan blinked. 'But we always take the fight to the villains. We can't just let them win.'

Balthier might have rolled his eyes at Vaan's staggering naivety had he not been feeling so oddly reflective all of a sudden. 'Vaan I am a villain.' He pointed out almost tiredly. 'Etteran is a senator with twenty years loyal service to the Empire.' A moment's pause and Balthier had to choke back a bitter laugh as he realised the sheer ridiculousness of what he was trying to say (and he knew that the seething and disaffected sixteen year old runaway he had once been was screaming silently in his head with every word). 'While I might still harbour the belief that unwavering loyalty to the bloody Empire is a crime in and of itself, from the perspective of the general populace of Archades, Etteran is a woman of unimpeachable reputation and I……' Balthier's lips curved into an amused grin. _Ah my dear lady senator bravo on a masterful play._ '…..I am an unrepentant traitor and career criminal with suspect morals and no discernable loyalties to anyone but my self. If I make a move against Etteran I am simply handing her victory along with my head.'

He was Balthier realised, quite perfectly caught out by his own character flaws. There had been other foes in his past who had tried to turn his weaknesses against him, some had succeeded many others had failed, but few had achieved such an elegant détente as Senator Etteran. Balthier felt his habitual smirk slide into place. If he didn't know better he might even imagine that this was Etteran's objective after all. Not an endplay but merely an artful stalemate……but for what purpose?

Why force him to a standstill when she could simply have him killed?

'Wait, wait.' Vaan narrowed his bright blue eyes and it was almost possible to hear the odd workings of his mind shifting through the connotations of Balthier's words. 'Leashed and tamed?' He repeated the earlier quote and then hissed as the pieces finally clicked. 'You think she wanted you to find out about her – so you'd come after her!' Vaan's brow creased into what was undoubtedly supposed to be a formidable frown but didn't quite make it passed mere agitation. 'Why would she want you to confront her at her own home? Do you think she meant to ambush you or something?'

Balthier turned his back on the view of the brightening sky and the sluggish river below and instead turned to lean against the railings so he could observe the waking city, idly allowing his eyes to climb the ascending slopes of the capital. 'Vaan if you were my enemy and you wanted to……incapacitate me without actually doing a ruddy thing to me physically how would you go about it, hmm?'

'Huh?' Despite the vacuous statement Vaan's expression creased with fierce concentration. 'You mean if I wanted to stop you doing something without hurting you?'

'Quite.' Balthier nodded. Vaan, unlike the vast majority of half-wits and idiots Balthier had met in his life, was a fool via circumstance not design. The boy was a vast blank slate of ignorance upon which a man, such as Balthier, could if he so desired, adorn all manner of garnered knowledge. Balthier wondered if this was why he had bothered to teach Vaan anything at all, because unlike most men, the boy was a bona fide dim wit not because of his preconceptions but instead because he had none.

'Well,' Vaan drawled warming to the hypothetical challenge. 'Making you promise not to do things works fairly well. You don't like making promises and that's why if you do you keep them.' Balthier scowled at the subtle jibe relating to their previous "conversation" and waved his hand irritably to ward off any further revisiting of _that_ particular issue.

'Let's assume that emotional harassment is not an option. What would you do to get me out of the way, presuming I was in some way a threat to you,' Balthier stopped as a new thought came to him, 'Or perhaps not a threat but an impediment. What would you do?'

'Distract you,' Vaan replied promptly. 'Everyone knows that you always do what you say you're going to do and you always win. So I suppose if I didn't want you to do something, like, I don't know, get possessed by an ugly statuette and throw yourself off an island,' Balthier glowered at Vaan as the insolent bastard grinned back at him insouciant and undeterred, 'well I'd come up with something else to really annoy you so you didn't even notice the other stuff that's going on.'

'Exactly,' Balthier's lips pulled back from his teeth in a wolfish smile. Vaan's eyebrows rose so far over his broad brow that his eyes threatened to drop out of his comically stretched sockets.

'Oh whoa,' he blinked. 'So what is the Senator trying to distract you from doing?'

Balthier's smirk fell off his face all at once. 'I have no bloody clue.' He admitted darkly.

'Oh,' Vaan spoke softly. 'That's bad then.'

Balthier did not dignify that statement with a response – at least not verbally, nevertheless without quite being conscious of doing so he reached for the pendant on the chain around his neck hidden under his sheet. Absently fishing the chain out he curled his palm around the broken crystal teardrop. It was infuriating but somehow he knew that what he was forgetting, or unable to see, was something so fundamentally obvious a blind man would be able to discern it.

Damn it all to Faram and back……why couldn't he see what he was missing? Draklor, Etteran, bloody Faram and his acolytes, they were all connected and yet, at the same time, none of it formed any sensible chain of cause and effect. He was missing something vital, some computation of logic that would turn this vast and confusing conspiracy into something explicable and therefore resolvable. Hand clenching around the half tear drop reflexively Balthier bared his teeth in a defiant grimace against the city of his birth and distantly Etteran herself. He couldn't confront her, he couldn't yet wrest control of this game from her, until he knew the true stakes.

Bugger it all to hellfire and back……all he had were questions! Questions without answers, and yet he knew (felt it in his heart like an ache) that somewhere beyond this city there was his answer.

(And deep down inside he missed Fran).

And thus again myopia thy name is Bunansa.

* * *

**Ivalice within and beneath:**

They moved through the roots and they came together; all the villages, all the Viera of every darkened wood and secret way coming together deep within Ivalice's chambered heart.

The Viera were in exodus.

For Mjrn it was terror and fascination. She had never dreamed to see such an exodus in all her years – would never have wanted to had choice been granted her. There was such fear here, such uncertainty. Ragnarok waited to the north, perched upon the teeth of fallen mountains and to the south the ocean roiled, ready to rise, ready to tower and crash upon the land. The roots spoke of chaos waiting in the wings, of calamity held upon the breath of one decision to the next. The deep roots of Yggdrasil urged the Viera deeper, urged Mjrn and her sisters to find shelter far from the surface.

Jote said that they must run and hide. Jote said that this great gathering cloud was a matter for the humes, for the Bangaa, the Seeq, and all the other races of the surface who lived beyond green leaf canopy and had made their own damnation. Mjrn did not know what to think. She heard the whispers of the roots just as all her sisters did. She heard the name that was not to be spoken in every shiver of this endless dark, and sweltering cage of stone and dirt.

_Lente, _the roots whispered. _Lente_, the insects of the soil chattered. _Lente _screamed the stones. Yet as loud as that one whisper was there was another, quieter voice that Mjrn heard perhaps alone of all the Viera.

_Fran, sister, beloved. Do not forget her little one, _Whispered the mother in Mjrn's sensitive ears. _There is to be a war, my child, a war that need be thought in mind lest its bloody toll be paid in flesh. There is to be a great and terrible sundering; yet let the bonds be not severed. Lente is not the Way; the Wood alone is not the Way. For one is poison, and the other fear. Yet never must the Viera fall; the fruit must grow on vines old and new. Three answers stand and none correct. There must be a mending little one. You know this is the Way. _

Mjrn was not Jote; she did not understand all the words mother Ivalice spoke to her. She had not the ear for the Wood and the Way that her eldest sister did, nor did she have the mind for the hume roads Fran walked so undaunted. Yet Mjrn, while weakest of her sisters, was strong for that same weakness. While Jote saw only the one path and Fran could walk only the other Mjrn saw them both for what they were and what they could not be; she saw where they twined and where they parted.

As she followed the great phalanx of Viera through the secret ways of the root and mother womb, as she watched her kin descend into dark silence and further passivity she found from her lips did come a mantra all her own.

'Is it not better to live changed than die whole?'

When the Viera sunk deeper into the earth Mjrn did not follow. To the surface she ran to pose an answer, to find a question, and to seek a better resolution.

Some burdens, she thought, should be left well enough alone.

* * *

_A/N: __One hundred and fifty-one reviews for sixteen chapters__!!!! Thank you does not do my gratitude justice. All I can do is my darnedest to make this story worth the time everyone reading and reviewing has put into it, and believe me I will do my utmost not to disappoint you all. Thank you muchly; Spikey44 ;)_


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: Hi all, Lente's No. One Fan raised an interesting point in review that might be making this story confusing for some readers. While I know in official canon there are in fact male Viera (they're just very shy and don't get out much – as in at all) in the head canon of this story there are __no male Viera__ – period. The Viera are a female race only –which means that they need to mate with males of compatible races to breed. I don't think I made this clear before, so sorry for any misunderstanding; hopefully knowing this makes some of the previous plot revelations in the last couple chapters more explicable? ;) _

_Also I apologise if the Balthier sections seem a bit filler-ish but I promise that what Balthier does in this chapter will have serious ramifications in regards Etteran's ultimate plan. _

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**708 O.V: Archades – The Bunansa Residence Highgarden Terrace**

It had been some years since Zavier Zargabaath had set foot in the Bunansa townhouse. Wryly he reflects that there had been considerably fewer _Moogles_ in residence the last time he was here.

'Kupo-po no, no, no; you're not listening Kupo!' An ebon furred Moogle berated a bangaa hired hand in a high fluting voice. 'You are to take this gil-bond to Poppin in Trant, not Pippun in Tsenoble.'

Meanwhile through the open archway leading to one of the main parlours of the townhouse's ground floor, Zargabaath espied a foursome of moogles hovering over the old Bunansa dining table (the family's eagle crest just visible under fading lacquer) poring over a curling map of the city. 'We need to send repair teams, here, here, and here Kupo; on the double kupo!'

Standing in threshold of the front door the lilting sounds of various "kupos and kupo-pos" filtered in and out of Zargabaath's awareness. There had to be at least forty Moogles present. The Magister sighed; it was a sign of advancing age when on could not immediately assimilate change. All the same he was not so old he could not recognise a positive change. The Fraternity of Kupo were industrious, innovative, and had been heavily involved in the clean up operation within the city after the quake. Archades, long ensconced in comfortable jingoism, was only now beginning to realise the sheer unstoppable energy of the Moogle work ethic and Zargabaath found himself begrudgingly grateful to Ffamran for introducing Archades to Moogle endeavour in such a large way. The old magister shook his head in something approaching amusement at his own thoughts, before grasping the banister and beginning his climb up the stairs.

Beyond the superficial changes to the townhouse's décor (the insignia of the Fraternity of Kupo swathed large expanses of blank walls, fluttering in any number of silken shades from dozens of tapestries) his old friend's home had not changed all that much. There was still a sense of self-satisfied grandeur to the brass fixtures, the glossy wood stair rails under peeling coats of vanish, and the faded, yet still intricate, floral patterns etched into the wallpaper. The old house even smelled the same; a subtle hint of old books and sun-warmed dust –more akin to a library than a residence. It seemed to Zargabaath, climbing stairs he had ascended many times in years long gone, and noting old and familiar furnishings with a weathered eye, that this house had gained more from the numerous generations of Bunansas than just an abundance of time worn antiques. Indeed this house seemed to exude an aura of confidence and certainty; an indomitable sense that it would remain and survive even as its former glory was chipped away.

(The Bunansas laughed in the face of mortality, entropy, and the passage of time. They would dare eternity with faint mockery to deny them their glory. _Ah Cid, my friend, your boy came home at last and your grandchildren are like as not to live in the woods as they are the Grand Arcade._)

Zavier sneered at his own inner thoughts. Ffamran - vain, angry, and peculiarly righteous Ffamran, who had seen the rot in the Capital before anyone else had, and who had run away as fast as his devious little mind could plot only to return years later as someone else entirely. _What do you say my friend; our children have not exactly walked the path we set for them, have they_?

Zargabaath stopped before a mounted portrait hanging upon the wall of the landing. Beyond a smeared skein of ancient dust it was still possible to see the proud and immense visage of a grinning Cidolfus clasping a tiny, wriggling infant to his barrel chest. Zavier eyed the portrait warily; the painting seemed like a mocking whisper from another era, a halcyon time between the tragedies of his and Cid's youth and the calamities of their old age. For one terrible moment looking at that picture, remembering all the pains and the small triumphs that were so artfully hidden in each brush stroke fading into old canvas, Zargabaath felt terribly, terribly old.

'Ah there you are your honour; I thought I heard the skulking step of the law darkening my doorstep.'

* * *

**Naldoa Ocean – twenty miles from the coast of Iona Island:**

The ocean is never silent, it roars with too much force to be heard by any mortal ear. Huge, timeless, restless yet perverse in its constancy the ocean stirred as somewhere far away a vengeful soul made frothing surf surge red.

The wave began many leagues beneath the unbroken surface of the sea; it built like an avalanche in reverse, or an army of pure elemental force. A speck of rock poking above the cobalt waves the island of Iona twinkled green and sweet under a blue sky studded with slow moving cumulus clouds. The isle was the target and her populace knew it not.

Aboard the fishing schooner Anvalla's Mercy, Tegran Sonheim watched the horizon and breathed in the brine. The fish were biting well today and the nets dredging deep, yet something did not sit well with the old fisherman. The sea was screaming. He could hear it.

'Bring in the nets; lift anchor,' the deck was wet, slimed with the detritus of a good haul and covered in silt and kelp. Tegran's gait was forever lopsided from the Landis War and the ballista shot that had taken most of his right leg and all his youthful vigour in one blood soaked night of carnage. All the same the captain knew his ship and ruled her well; swift and spritely he moved amid the five man crew, snapping orders and moving towards the wheel. 'We're headed back to port on the jiffy.'

'But Cap'n we've hours o' daylight left.' First mate Antoinin frowned out at the blue on blue horizon that remained so wonderfully, deceptively even.

'That's an order lad,' Tegran snapped. 'I don't like this calm – tis a lie.' Under his one foot and one wooden stump the deck of Tegran's ship shifted, gentle waves rising to nudge the keel on either side; like a taut spring Tegran could feel the ocean shifting underneath him.

'Quickly!' The old mariner snapped loping in ungainly fashion towards the wheelhouse. Naldoa was a good girl mostly, oh she had her temper tantrums, the occasional heavy squall and the habitual cyclones during the season, but other than that she treated the boats that rode her with gentle indulgence, granting up her bounty without much fuss or bother. All the same Tegran had been at this game long enough to remember that one wave back in 699O.V…….. Just like he remembered the crews that never came home as the ocean rose high as the darkling sky to sweep near fifteen ships away into the deep dark yonder.

'Ah lassy you'll not take ole Tegran down too, will y'?'

Tegran had been closer to port that fated day and that was all that had saved him and the Anvalla; all the same he remembered the roar of Naldoa as she'd hitched her white surf skirts high and rode into Iona town like judgement come-a-calling.

_Them_ powers that be said it would never happen again. Just like the bleeding physicians had claimed old Tegran would never walk nor work again after that sodding ballista shot ripped him all in two. Tegran had proved _them _wrong back then and he figured ole lady Naldoa was about to do the same.

Gripping the wheel in tight sweaty hands and setting the glossair rotas to spinning Tegran did not bother to turn around as he heard Antonin's uncouth exclamation rise from the outer deck.

'Faram's flamin' whore! Cap'n the horizon is rising!'

* * *

**Bunansa Residence:**

Zargabaath had seen Ffamran's approach in the periphery of his vision (he saw so much more when he was not in armour) yet he had not deigned it necessary to turn to face the whelp, nor did he bother now. (Selfish boy; you killed my friend and left his legacy abandoned for years). Therefore Zavier said nothing and continued to regard the boy's father silently.

Of course Ffamran had grown into his Bunansa conceit well enough by now, and did not appreciate being ignored, all the same, whereas it had been inevitable he would speak again, the choice of his words was some small balm to Zargabaath's growing ill temper.

'I had thought to take the picture down,' the last Bunansa spoke in softer voice not bothering to move or otherwise interrupt Zargabaath's communion with his history but coming to stand just behind him so he too could regard the portrait, 'in the end it seemed……petty. The old man deserves to be remembered somewhere I suppose.'

Zargabaath did turn to face Ffamran then, regarding the man who he still saw as a pale and sullen adolescent trapped between his father's ambition and his own inability to assert his independence. In all honesty Zargabaath was not sure that distorted image of the man before him was not perhaps the truth behind the pirate caricature.

'A spot of polish would not go amiss; the state you keep your house does not speak well of you.'

Zargabaath watched the ever-ready smirk climb the boy's lips as he reacted to finally having the Magister's attention while deftly ignoring Zavier's mild rebuke.

'Thank you for coming your honour,' he bowed lightly, absently mocking. 'I appreciate a Judge Magister does not oft make house calls to escapee prisoners.'

'You should not have left the gaol Ffamran.' Zargabaath pointed out bluntly. He had been in two minds whether or not to bring a squadron of hoplites with him to drag Ffamran back into custody, but in the end had refrained simply because Ffamran had yet to do anything to make a nuisance of himself.

(Assuming that is that he was not in fact guilty of conspiracy to commit treason, Zavier thought darkly, but then again he didn't really believe it of the boy. The pirate Balthier had never been known to commit the same crime twice after all).

Ffamran arched a brow in response to Zargabaath's brusque words, 'I shall leave that to hindsight, your Honour, for the moment I find myself quite pleased to be in more comfortable confines.' The prodigal gestured for Zargabaath to precede him along the hallway to one of the guest bedrooms. Inside the neatly appointed room Ffamran had obvious claimed as a temporary abode, Zargabaath was only marginally surprised to find the two Rabanastrans and a group of young people in rather dirty Draklor intern uniforms.

'Huh,' the boy Vaan said as he looked at Zargabaath from where he sat, as comfortable as a broken down puppet, on the floor by the bed. He flicked his blue gaze to Ffamran. 'I thought you'd call for Basch.' He said as Ffamran eased further into the room around Zavier, before blue eyes as bright and seemingly empty as a spring sky over desert dunes studied Zargabaath. 'You don't look like I imagined you'd look without your armour on.'

Zargabaath was not sure how one should properly respond to such a statement and was therefore rather grateful when Ffamran lightly clipped the youth around the back of the head with a drawled, 'Quiet Vaan,' at the same moment the pig-tailed girl, Penelo, elbowed her fellow countryman in the ribs while shushing him with a scowl. 'Vaan – try and be polite – _please_.'

'What is this about?' Zargabaath demanded after his eyes had roved over the four students all clustered around the large roll top desk in the corner of the room. He thought he recognised the Prince of Pressia among them and frowned a little more. What was Ffamran playing at?

'Insurance,' Cid's wayward boy replied lazily gesturing towards a number of scattered papers and heavy tomes littering the bed and the desk. 'I discovered that Etteran has a connection to the blighter who tried to gut me a few nights back,' Zargabaath turned his head and fixed an executioner's level stare on Ffamran who merely smirked faintly, 'Hmm, I know, my word against hers, and the provenance of my honour is somewhat questionable at best, but there you have it.'

Zargabaath said nothing for a long moment. He had already discussed at length with the Emperor and Gabranth which factions of power within Archades might seek to use Ffamran as a weapon to hurt Larsa's rule, and while Senator Madrigalise Etteran's name was not one of those known to Zargabaath and his network of informants that did not mean that, like Gabranth, he would dismiss Ffamran's insistence that she was conspiring against him out of hand. The knife in the back tended to come from the one you least suspected, after all. Ffamran, although a former traitor, deserter, and conspirator against the Empire had perhaps the least motivation to turn upon Archadia at the present time than did any of the nominally loyal gentry.

'Senator Etteran has a faultless reputation as a lawmaker.' Zargabaath intoned. _But her actions of late have been……concerning. _Not least her interest in the running of Draklor under Ffamran's stewardship; a matter she had no official mandate to be interested in.

Zargabaath had thought long and hard, and spoken at length with both Gabranth (who as Basch Fon Ronsenberg had also struck a blow against the very Empire he now served, alongside Ffamran) and also with his own daughter Anna to try and parse out Ffamran's reasoning for coming home and for any suggestion that he might have done so to undermine the Empire he had oft claimed to despise.

In the end, and although the answer still felt unsatisfactory to Zavier, he had decided, watching Ffamran rebuild Draklor, while in his own peculiar way resurrecting his father's memory, that perhaps Ffamran had come home simply to come home.

'And I have a faultless reputation as a troublemaker,' Ffamran agreed lightly interrupting his thoughts. 'Hence the reason I called you here. I am not quite so rash as to make allegations, or take definitive action, against upstanding Archadian citizenry without solid rationale, your Honour.' There was a pause and he added with odd candour under his breath. 'Or at least not without out a bloody good escape plan.'

Zargabaath might have refuted this. Ffamran had proven himself rash indeed on occasion, but all he said in the end was simply: 'What evidence can you give me?'

There was the tiniest hint of the earnest, strangely principled boy Ffamran had been before his morals forced him to run and defile his own honour, in the serious cast to his face as he spoke succinctly and without his usual self-indulgence. 'To support my claims - not a dickie bird – but I can, I hope, mitigate my own circumstances by cutting off the conspiracy against me at the first pass.'

Ffamran gestured once more to the piles of papers and ledgers covering all available flat surfaces of the room. 'This is everything I have been working on since taking up stewardship of Draklor. I can think of nothing else Etteran, or anyone else for that matter, might use as motivation for this elaborate smear campaign; thus so it cannot be used against me, I offer up my work to complete judicial and senatorial scrutiny.'

* * *

**Lanlet Downe:**

It came to Fran as a whispered warning floating soft as a dream upon an errant breeze; sharp as the pinch of sea salt on the air, squalling like the clarion calls of circling sea birds Fran's ears, long deafened to the oppressive dirge of Golmore, had since grown sensitive to Ivalice's many other tongues.

……_.Danger……._

Turning her attention away from the enraged mother and the fool-boy she looked instead first to the sky – ever her compass - and then closed her eyes to listen.

……_Danger_……

A shiver stroked its way down Fran's spine; fingers of dread living aftershocks of adrenaline behind. Above her head Fran noted the clouds begin to race and darken as if bruised and fleeing something far in the distance. The leaves of the many twisted forest boughs quivered as one, akin to a million skeleton fingers clicking. Something was coming.

……_Danger_……

'Do you hear?' Fran addressed herself to neither hume nor Viera and at the same time to both.

L'Moi lifted her head, eyes unclouding as emotion gave way to curiosity, concentration, and burgeoning alarm. _Danger. _The other Viera hissed, her own ears twitching. 'This sound…….such raging, I know it not, yet think I do that I have heard it once before……'

Cowing against the tree he was earlier thrown against Ethain raised his head, swiping stringy dark hair from his brow. 'What? What are you on about?'

It was then that a sound like a thousand tea kettles screaming rent the air causing the two Viera to shudder and clutch at their ears in pain as the klaxon wails tore through the once stillness of the forest.

Ethain's already pale face grew more ashen still as his wide eyes all but popped with recognition. '……I know that sound. That's the port alarm siren.' Bursting upward with sudden motion Ethain leapt to his feet, eyes transfixed beyond the tangled forest paths of Lanlet-Downe towards the ocean he could not see.

'Oh gods preserve us,' he mouthed the words on a choked whisper, '……_Tidal wave_!'

* * *

**Bunansa Residence:**

'You think it is your _work_ that is the cause of this?' Zargabaath demanded and then checked himself at his own surprise. Ffamran was Cid's boy after all. Archades had learned to her detriment what a maverick genius could do when left unhindered. Therefore perhaps it was not so unlikely that some in the capital would fear Ffamran – not for what _he_ had done, but for what he _might yet do_ given free reign and the Emperor's consent.

That thought fresh in his mind Zargabaath stopped himself from approaching the research with an effort of will, curiosity almost overcoming years of ingrained discipline. Ffamran had to submit reports of his work to both the Judiciary and the Senate on a monthly basis as part of the agreement that allowed him Draklor, and within those reports he had to give a basic outline of what his research entailed. All the same within those requirements lurked a vast potential for concealment of the _actual_ activities he was involved in, and Zavier suspected that Ffamran was perhaps even better at obfuscation of the truth than Cid had ever been.

'I think,' Ffamran said crisply answering his initial question, and the look in his eyes said clearly that he had discerned at least some of Zargabaath's internal musings from his tone and was both subtly amused and irritated by them, 'that I am regrettably, my father's son, and while I _daily_ endeavour to live with that sin, others might deem it an unnecessary danger to have another Bunansa lunatic residing over the Empire's greatest weapon factory.' Ffamran shook his head amusedly before continuing. 'I also know that someone blowing up Draklor – whether I was in the building or not – would greatly inconvenience the progress of my work.' There came another pause this one accompanied by an ironic tilt of the head towards Zargabaath, 'As would being banged up on trumped up treason charges.'

Zargabaath accepted this reasoning quietly; it was sound as far as he could see except for one facet: 'You have made enemies of your own, Ffamran; enemies who care nothing for your lineage one way or the other.'

Ffamran's smirk turned silky as he purred a lazy rebuttal, 'Really your honour, did you think I'd leave any of my old enemies _alive_ to come after me here?' The smile was knifelike and his eyes hard. 'What sort of a dreadfully incompetent brigand do you take me for, hmm?'


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: So...I fell off the edge of the world; I'm clawing my way back slowly but steadily. This chapter is not what it should be, but better is coming soon._

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**708 O.V: The Naldoa Ocean**

She rode the wave like a chariot; cresting the peak of a liquid mountain and dredging the power of an entire ocean. From her throne of blood red surf Lente stared straight ahead watching the island rise up from the cobalt blue like a speck of emerald paradise. Her eyes narrowed, her ears twitched, beyond the roar of the ocean, echoing her fury, she could sense the lullaby of Wood and Viera but also the din of hume chaos.

'It is so? They would flaunt the natural order; they would mock that which they threw down?' Lente whispered; lips tainted with salt and brine. 'Then they shall be first.'

The wave rose, towered, rolled unstoppably forward, collapsing in on itself only to rise again, higher than ever before. Blood spray stained the air and underneath the power of Lente's frothing throne, her rage scoured barren the once bountiful coral beds of the ocean shelf. Onwards she rode, forward towards Iona. Once she had been the pivot on which balance depended; once her Word had made the world – she would see it so again.

'Let them know my hate; let them know their doom is nigh.' And the once mother screamed to make the world hear.

* * *

**The Ocean: within the Maelstrom**

_All men die; it is the only certainty that can be depended on. That few can decide the time and manner of their death is merely a fact of life; an irony of mortality that only the gods could find humorous. _

The Anvalla was a bloody good ship; she was nippy and swift over choppy water or calm currents and she'd been more of a home to her crew over the years than any port or landlocked town, but alas, she was but a vessel of mortal design when all was said and done. She could not outrun the reach of Mother Naldoa anymore than could her captain sprout wings and fly like a bird.

Tegran Sonheim wrestled for control of the wheel, struggling to remain standing in the wheelhouse as his darling little vessel was tossed hither and thither upon an ocean writhing like a woman in the throes of passion, except a darn sight less enjoyable. Water pelted down upon them, yet it did not rain; instead the ocean curled like a serpent in on itself in a bid to replace the sky. Waves fifteen feet tall rose to buffet the boat's side, dashing themselves into spray and salt mist across the deck. Madam Naldoa was in high temper, like a wee child throwing her toys from her pram. Fish sprang from the sea, flung high into the air by the reaching waves, to land wetly onto the deck. Rains of kelp and crustaceans that would never normally see the light of day, slopped up over the sides of the boat and still Tegran kept trying to navigate the storm.

'Cap'n; the lifeboats!' First Mate Antonin clutched at the doorframe to the wheelhouse as the Anvalla rocked up almost vertical, prow rising completely from the water, before gravity tore her down again.

'Tsk, they're like as not t'be matchsticks as soon as we launch 'em,' Tegran scoffed, not so much holding the wheel now as clinging on to it to stay upright.

'But we've got t'do summat!' Antonin was still a young man, and had yet to recognise that he was only a pawn of his own mortality. Tegran sighed and stared out of the water streaming window of the wheelhouse. All he could see was water, water everywhere.

'Aye laddie, figure we'll be doin' summat soon enough.'

'What?' Antonin's fingers were white and bloodless as he clutched at the doorframe, trying to wedge his wiry frame against the open doorway to better keep his balance - and still the Anvalla rocked and rolled and just about kept afloat.

Tegran smiled the smile all old seadogs learn to smile. 'Drownin' lad; we're already dead boyo.'

'...Cap'n...no...' Antonin stared for the first time seeing death's reflection in his captain's tired eyes. Tegran sighed and spared a brief thought for a life lived as well as he could manage. It was not much of a comfort to know he was going to die as he had lived, by the whims of the sea, but he'd take what he could get. Soon enough it would not matter one way or the other.

'Mother Naldoa's not goin' t'let us make land again in this life.' He said simply, as underneath them Naldoa gave a great heave, contracting her vastness, before extending her might high into the sky. Anvalla, a deadfall twig within an endless expanse of unfathomable water, snapped in two and sank without a trace.

_All men live to die. It is their fate, their destiny – for this is the price of unbridled potential._

_

* * *

_

**The Port of Iona – Lighthouse:**

_All men die; humes are but clay of the soil, dug up by immortal hands from the roots, moulded into blank canvas and set loose, blind and ignorant, upon Ivalice. The hourglass sand of life escapes all men swift and sure; they may chase after their lost youth, only to find the waiting grave._

'Faram preserve and keep me; eternally I pledge my soul to your service...'

Falon Jessop, harbourmaster wrenched on the bell pull as hard as he could and the klaxons wailed from the lighthouse tower. He could not tear his eyes from the sight before him. He'd been a man of the port all his life; he was Ionian through and through and had more brine in his veins than blood, but this was a sight he'd never seen before. This was no mere wave. The ocean was not surprised froth and foam red as good claret. The sky was not supposed to rain blood, the clouds were not supposed to funnel downwards, so that heaven met ocean and ocean reached for celestial highs.

'F-faram preserve and keep me; eternally I pledge my soul to your service...l – let me rest m' weary spirit within your bountiful embrace, O lord, and let me know what it is...what it is t' know peace...'

Muscles burning, eyes wide and glazed, Falon continued to wrench on the alarm cord until he tore it loose in his clenched fingers. All was condemned to silence, as beyond, he watched the ocean revolt; watched the tiny dark shapes of ships lost in the maelstrom shatter like broke-back fish and sink far beneath the waves.

'Faram save us...what did we ever do t'deserve this?'

_It is the humes' destiny to die. It is also their destiny to live._

_

* * *

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**The International Air Flotilla - Kerwon**

'This cannot be a natural phenomenon.' Her Royal Highness Ashelia B'Nargan Dalmasca swept along the observation deck of her state airship the Raminas II, alongside her honoured guest the Archduke Al-Cid Margrace. They came to a halt by unspoken mutual consensus by the window that gave them an unobstructed view of the smoking crater that had once been Mount Bur-Omisace. 'The volcanic fault line under Mount Bur-Omisace has been dormant for longer than any race has recorded history.' Ashe continued her voice threaded with heat and frustration as she gestured almost angrily outward to incorporate the view of destruction below them. 'Perhaps I have a suspicious mind; perhaps I have simply seen too much, but I cannot fathom that this is merely a natural calamity.'

Al-Cid Margrace, his arms folded behind his back and his sunglasses tucked into his partially unbuttoned blue shirt (so as to best express the solemnity of the situation) smiled faintly. 'It is true. I too am of the same mind.' He chuckled without much mirth. 'We are jaded, yes? Our experience teaches us to fear our fellow man more than the capricious majesty of Mother Nature, no?'

Ashe sighed and pressed her deceptively dainty fingertips to the glass observation window. 'It is not only that her grace the Gran Kiltias is missing, and the Kiltia seat of power so utterly destroyed that concerns me.'

Al-Cid eyed the woman who might yet become his wife, should he play his political and romantic cards right from the corner of his eye and chose his words with care, yet mingled with just a dash of daring. 'You worry for Archadia, no?'

Ashe looked up at him sharply. 'I would not put it quite that way.'

Al-Cid smiled and fanned the fingers of his hands out in a placating gesture. 'True, I mean to say, that you, most beautiful and keen minded Majesty that you are, have noticed, as have I, that Arcahdes was also hit by an earthquake at the time of the Mount Bur-Omisace eruption, yes? It is interesting, no, that Draklor was damaged in the quake. It makes one wonder, yes, if dese two events be connected?'

Ashe eyed him with some annoyance but also a trace of indulgence, 'Your Grace, I do not require you to preface all conversation with superfluous flattery. I have already said that I will marry you if my council and yours can agree adequate terms.'

Al-Cid chuckled, 'And dis pleases me much, my delightful desert bloom.' He reached out to take one of the queen's hands and dropped a surprisingly chaste kiss upon it. 'But I must protest. Dese words you dismiss as flattery,' he shook his head. 'I am wounded that you would see it as such. _Superfluous_! I say nonsense. A woman such as you should be showered with praise as a matter of necessity, yes?'

Ashelia B'Nargan Dalmasca, Dynast Queen, saviour of her country, vanquisher of the Occuria and warrior of renown rolled her eyes and pulled her hand away. 'Your accent has been improving of late, Al-Cid, but when you persist in flattering me you tend to slip.' She told him coolly turning once more to look out of the window. 'But to answer your question; yes it does disturb me that Archadia seems connected to these recent upheavals.'

'Hmm,' Al-Cid crowded a little closer to the beautiful rose he longed to pluck, 'and does it also concern you, my beautiful lady, that all dis has happened while another Bunansa resides at the helm of the Empire's weapons factory, eh?'

Ashe's eyes narrowed slightly and her expression, usually still and stately, darkened perceptibly. The fingers of the hand she held to the window, curled a little into a faint claw, nails scratching at the glass. 'Yes.' She said grimly. 'That worries me most of all.'

* * *

**The Port of Iona:**

_From Ivalice's womb came last the humes; weak, ignorant of truth, they grow to scramble in confusion, to struggle for knowledge, to claw amid the roots for answers to the question they live and breathe. It is the perfection of the design; the cruelty of symmetry that one must seek so that others may know. Death is the price of comprehension; death is destiny. All men must die. _

'C'mon, C'mon MOVE!' Eloise Jessop the harbourmaster's wife bellowed, shoving and signalling for everyone to get off the docks and away to the inland shelters. 'Bleedin' 'eck, can y' not 'ear t'sirens! This ain't a sodding drill y' damned land lubbers!'

Hundreds of feet hammered over worn boardwalks; fresh produce stalls were overturned in the stampede, people were trampled and a thousand moments of unnoticed bravery and cowardice occurred in the space of time between ultimate disaster and its cruel aftermath. Within the quay the briny waters lapping at the dock began to agitate; wavelets rose higher, knocking against moored sailboats and fishing schooners until they were set to rocking; the groans of wood keels scraping wooden pier became a sighing chorus. Everything was suspended in a moment of baited anticipation.

Eloise Jessop shoved faded red hair from a permanently ruddy, sunburned face, as the wind picked up out of nowhere and the garish sun went into hiding. The last of the lolly-gaggers had fled the quayside like rats from ships yet to sink yet Eloise did not join them in exodus. Instead her eyes were drawn beyond the harbour to the spit of land protruding out to see, and the red and white painted lighthouse poking up from the furthest point. From the lighthouse the klaxon still wailed, a futile warning to the town that they were all but dead.

'Falon y' right numpty, get down from there.' Clasping one calloused, bitten nailed hand over the other, Eloise nervously rubbed her thumb over her wedding ring, a band of pale gold scratched and tarnished but still bright even after all these long years. Faded green eyes, hemmed in by premature wrinkles stared intently towards the lighthouse then twitched towards the groaning boats, the twisting but silent breeze and the shadow looming where once there had been merely sunny horizon.

'Oh 'eck,' Eloise released a whispered exclamation in a universal language known to any and all who have looked into the moment of the their death and thought not of themselves, but of the _reason _that they long to draw another breath. It was then that Eloise started running, not away, but instead towards the lighthouse. Because maybe she wasn't a beauty anymore, and maybe her life wasn't the dazzling adventure she'd dreamed it would be as a bride of seventeen, but then again these thirty-five years as a wife had been alright really – and she'd be _damned_ if that numpty of a husband of hers was going to make a widow of her.

_All Humes must die; Solaris is but a dream of perfection without design. The question cannot outstrip the answer. This is the law of Balance. This is the Law of Lente. All men must die._

_

* * *

_

**Archadia: Bunansa Residence:**

Two men stood in a small, fussy study; the room was shrouded in unnatural shadow, the cheerful sunlight blocked and filtered by partially drawn curtains and lace. The scent of old paper and dried ink permeated the small space and the air heavy. Of the two men, only one, the younger, seemed at ease in this uncomfortable space.

'Solaris?' Zargabaath stared at the creased thicket of papers in his hands acutely aware of the jumping pulse point throbbing within his throat. Dragging his eyes from blue print diagrams that were almost frighteningly familiar the Judge Magister stared down the man who slouched in a chair before him, idly fingers tapping out a dissonant tattoo upon the small writing desk.

'This is what you have been working on?' The Judge asked the maverick genius.

'Yes,' Balthier averred dryly examining his sleeve cuffs before folding his arms casually over his chest. 'I'm sure you can now appreciate my prior reticence to come forward with the exact nature of my research, hmm.'

Zargabaath swallowed hoarsely as sweat prickled the nape of his neck. 'This cannot be allowed. It will be seen as a provocation; Rozzaria will almost certainly see such an endeavour as a move towards Imperial remobilisation.' He stared at the man before him, unsure whether to be appalled or suspicious or both. 'You of all people must understand that.'

Balthier smirked without humour, his eyes lazily following the erratic passage of a buzzing insect circling the ceiling. 'I understand that if nothing is done then we shall almost certainly have more war.' The younger man demurred. 'We humes are a greedy lot your honour, national differences pale to naught in the face of our desire for more of almost everything.'

'Be that as it may,' Zargabaath interjected, well aware of the socio-economic stresses of Ivalice politics and the constant struggle between the great nations for increasingly scant resources, 'This _Solaris _prototype goes far beyond the remit you were given, Ffamran. You overreach yourself too far.'

Flapping his hands airily, long skilled fingers splaying in the air, Balthier observed Zargabaath with an oddly remote expression, that seemed to suggest that for all that the Judge had years on him, in this one matter Balthier was not the naive one. 'The genie is out of the bottle, your honour, and we cannot merely pretend that the question has not been posed. Ignoring that an answer is within our reach could cause more harm than good.'

Zargabaath turned one page of complex notes over in his hands then another; the nearly indecipherable densely packed scribbles in the margins were alike to a strange and obscure language to Zargabaath, one he had no real hope of comprehending, but he truly did not need to. The careful, beautifully drafted line drawings of a construct large enough to contain the raw majesty of the sun, condense it, and reform that nebulous energy into quantifiable power told their own story. A story Zargabaath had seen play out once before; a story of brilliance overreaching itself, of ambition beyond restraint and destruction wearing the deceptive mask of progress. He stared into golden brown eyes glossed in irony and wondered if madness and damnation could be inherited by blood.

'You destroyed Bahamut yourself,' Zargabaath stated steadily almost hoping for some manner of trickery, for this conversation to be naught but farce; a cruel and capricious joke perpetrated upon him for nothing more than the sadistic amusement of the foppish brat before him. 'You cannot be serious. This is...even Cid in his madness would not have attempted something this audacious.'

Balthier met his gaze easily enough, a flicker of amusement twitching his brow upwards, 'Hmm, I am unsure whether to find compliment or reproach in that statement, your honour. All the same, I assure you, I am quite serious. Bahamut was a false dawn, my father's misstep. Solaris is the true answer.'

'The senate, Lord Larsa...,' A man of few words generally, but one who always chose those sparse words carefully Zargabaath now found himself all but incoherent. He was not an engineer, he was not a scientist; but he knew what he held in his hands. He knew what he faced when he looked into the unveiled, ruthless brilliance of Ffamran's intellect. He knew and he believed. He believed that within Ffamran's imaginings was a power to dwarf the false promises of Occurian Nethicite. Here was the true power of gods, ready to be placed in hume hands.

'You will never be allowed to build this, Ffamran.' Zargabaath said finally.

The last Bunansa smirked at him, 'I am not quite so great an egotist as you would paint me, sir. I am not my father to climb over the bodies of thousands to ride on the shoulders of his gods.' Slanted cunning eyes regarded Zargabaath amusedly as the younger man rose from his chair and walked over to the window. He twitched open the lace curtains to allow a pure shaft of sunlight to roll into the room. 'Nor am I a patriot; for that matter. I don't care whether Solaris is draped in the colours of Empire, or any nation. All that matters is that this is the answer. This is how we keep the sky.'

'This could unbalance Archadia's international status; this is power unprecedented.' Zargabaath almost spluttered. 'Is the sky truly worth so much to you Ffamran that you would usher in chaos to ensure your freedom?'

'Hmm, quite the penchant for theatrics you have, your honour. Surely you talent is wasted within the Judiciary.' Balthier pushed open the sash window, tugging the curtains back completely and the sun rolled in, like a wave, unavoidable and uncontainable. 'I don't profess myself a sage, or a philosopher; nor would I presume so much as to anticipate the future.' Balthier drawled lazily. Zargabaath watched the tawny rays of light spread across the worn carpeting and climb the faded papered walls until it filled the room; intangible yet transforming the nature of the space it occupied. He suspected that Balthier's actions in allowing the sun entry posed as something of an abject lesson. 'But then again, it is not my decision to make.' The Bunansa smiled wickedly. 'I have relinquished my research to your higher judgement after all, your honour. So I suppose the question is yours to answer.' Turning from the window, the sun limning his figure in gold, Balthier lounged against the sill. 'Do we retain the balance of the past, and the questions we haven't the courage to answer, or aim for something more, hm? The choice, Magister Zargabaath, is yours.'


	20. Chapter 20

**708 O.V: Iona **

The Viera of Lanlet-Downe were on the move; one and all. They ran like the wind raking through a field of wheat; smooth as liquid and graceful as a flock of geese through the air. One hundred long limbed graceful creatures, sprinting like spirits of beauty and power personified darted from the cover of thick foliage into the open and did not stop running. Their feet were near soundless, sure and spritely over familiar terrain, their ears pricked for the warnings of Mother Ivalice, Mother Wood, Mother Nature, their eyes focussed dead ahead and their very souls in tune with each one of their sisters. Blades flashed under a darkening sky, suggesting the ripple crash of distant lightning, quivers bounced against tapered backs overburdened with handcrafted arrows, and bows stretched outward past strong shoulders akin to skeletal wings as the Viera ran.

At the head of this wild hunt was a stranger, an outsider, an outcast, yet such divisions were meaningless; in the face of this headlong charge towards battle, such pointless allegations smacked of complete falsehood.

Viera are Viera whatever path they choose to run.

From the front line Fran ran towards danger in exactly the same way she had for more years than she willing chose to remember. She ran like a force of nature, a power potent and untamed but honed over long years into tempered skill and dexterous bravery. Fran ran towards danger, the self-deprecating laughter of a hume with a mocking fondness for heroics chiming in her mind echoing her footfalls as a deep rooted comfort; even apart they were together. Yet this time as Fran ran she was not _one_ alone, but _one_ with many. Fran ran towards danger and the Viera ran with her.

In some ways it was an accident; circumstance and consequence conspiring in randomness. Yet this was only a superficial explanation, the currents of truth ran deeper than that. Fran ran, the Viera followed and it was no accident. Instead it was the passing of a torch not yet acknowledged, a prophecy fulfilled before it could be proclaimed, and a challenge met before it could be realised.

There was a burden in running when one was not alone but instead leading; there was a burden in acknowledgement, a burden in coming home at last; a burden and a blessing and a calling all at once.

Fran does not feel that burden as she runs; she does not feel the shifting slip of history's constantly repeating groove. She is deaf and blind, even as she leads - and thus ever should it be.

Fran ran, the Viera followed, and destiny waited for the blind that do not see her coming.

* * *

**Along the banks of the Saraches River – Tchita Uplands**

The old temple had long since lost its consecrated name, and now was simply known as the Seat of Crows due to the sheer number of dark plumed birds that had made a nest within the broken edges and faded glory of its shattered dome and cracked pillars. Faded runic legends still whispered along moss daubed interior walls and the stench of Marlboros resided within where once, many centuries ago, a large congregation of the faithful had once made their offerings.

Madrigalise Etteran walked through the filth and the detritus built up over the years but her eyes were blind to all of it. It was her will to look beyond the present to a past that remained undocumented; a time before the Galtean Alliance and before the beginning of the age of Empire that had lasted for too long already. She came here to be close to her god; to feel his presence and bolster her resolve. She was one of the cursed few in Archades; the devout. Archadia, the actual Archadia that when pared away from all her conquered adornments and stolen lands, is really not such a great or vast country, has never put much stock in the divine. Oh, there are followers of Kiltia out in the rural farmlands, where superstition and religion still walked hand in hand and proved far more comfort to the simple folks than senatorial declarations and infighting ever would – but true communion with the spiritual? No, that was not the purview of the Empire.

Archadia had sold her collective soul for power many, many decades ago. Now the Empire spent borrowed credit bartered on the carcass of everything that was once sacred, divine, and beyond physical worth. Archadia devoured the spirit of her young in a daily banquet of cruel excess.

Madrigalise Etteran became a senator not only because it was expected that she would follow in her father's footsteps (for Archadia perpetrated her sin through constant repetition of the same old ambitions), but also because Archades has never had a temple, nor a shrine, nor a seminary or a nunnery, nor any other single place of spiritual refuge in a den of cold ingenuity. (Archadia's little soulless children do not know how to believe in anything they cannot see and thus destroy). She became a senator because it is the Law that Archadia worships.

(Madrigalise had once harboured desires to be a teacher, yet such a lowly position would ever and always be beneath the status of her family. Madrigalise must be as her father and his father and his mother had been before her: a dictator of petty restrictions. Never would she be able to fulfil her desire to shape young minds in wonder.)

To administer to the congregation of Archades one did not have the sanctity of the pulpit to fall back on, but instead, must make do with the senate amphitheatre. Cold rhetoric was the sermon of choice among the people of Empire, but ultimately the difference between a sermon devised to touch the soul and a speech directed towards the mind was not so much a matter of content as it was merely the arrangement of words; poetry versus prose, as it were, or so Senator Etteran had found.

(Such thoughts hurt her; they were glass ground into glittering powder that grated against the eyes and tore at the throat. She was loathe to think that belief based on nothing more than a lack of alternative could venerate hume conceit to such an extent and bring low the word of the divine.)

Madrigalise Etteran was a believer; she served something more than self-advancement or the preservation of a status-quo that robbed men of their dignity and forced children to starve for the sake of useless chops of wood. (Yet she did nothing to change old and stagnant tradition). Etteran believed that Archadia could still find her soul; that the Empire could peel back her armoured shell and open her heart. She believed that Archadia's foundries and laboratories were capable of producing more than cold steel, and her intellectual elite should be able to propagate more than simply the rule of law without justice. (Yet never has she, nor ever would she, speak such words. Her faith was something different. Her faith was not about redemption.)

First and foremost Madrigalise Etteran believed in Faram and in the lesson of the Kiltias; before the resurrection there must be a death. Archades could not rise anew until she fell to dust; there could be no redemption without humility, remorse, and the pain of recognising ones sins. Thus, Etteran believed, Archadia's citzenry must be irreconcilably broken, only then could the people find their soul. Senator Etteran, servant of the Empire for all her adult life, lived and breathed for one reason and one only – the destruction of the Empire.

(Madrigalise Etteran detests suffering in others; yet she would gladly watch a hundred beggars starve to death confident in the belief that bliss awaited them in the realm beyond.)

Looking up suddenly, through the cracked shell of the fallen dome roof, Etteran watched a flurry of crows launch upwards, cawing and screaming, into the air and arc towards the Imperial Capital; vicious specks of black in an otherwise flawless blue sky.

'A murder of crows?' Etteran murmured softly amused. 'Ah, my Lord Father, you are too kind to send such omens of your favour to your humble servant.'

* * *

**Iona: The Lighthouse**

Falon Jessop had already relinquished any proprietary sense regarding his own body. He was still nominally alive, but he knew that this state of existence was more formality than anything else at this juncture of time. His eyes were still glued to the massive wall of water rearing up before him, as graceful as the arched neck of a Nabradian warhorse, but Falon's soul was already pulling loose of his fleshly moorings.

Eloise Jessop, pounding up endless winding stairs, breath burning in her lungs and upper thigh muscles turning to liquid, had not reached such a level of acceptance and sanguine spiritual complacency. She hit the door leading to the top of the lighthouse with enough force to near as not pop the door from its hinges. The loud crack the door made as it flew open and smacked back against the wall was immediately devoured by the utter silence of rapidly approaching doom. Eloise did not look outward towards that doom, because there was no point, as she lunged across the threshold.

'Falon Jessop yer daft bloody numpty –get yer arse down these stairs on the double man!'

Words and actions did not precisely reach accord when it came to intent. Strong arms clutched around Falon's middle as a desperate sob caught in her throat and Eloise buried her head in her husband's shoulder. There was a second when she breathed in and her lungs greedily inhaled a thousand nuanced scents that tasted of a hundred thousand memories; moments in time precious and mundane. It was a breath before dying as angry rain rattled the curved wall of windows circling the top of the lighthouse tower– that the rain was red was of no consequence.

'Oh bugger it, Falon – Bloody 'ell!' Eloise squeezed closed her eyes. Had she had time she might have thought of the granddaughter whose soft curls she loved to wrap her fingers around, or the son-in-law she still did not approve of or…

'Lozzie?'

Falon, mind body and spirit suddenly residing all within the same corporeal reality once more, reacted in mounting horror as he realised that his wife was _here_. His Lozzie. His best girl. She was here and she shouldn't be, and in that moment he knew that yes, there was something to fear greater than death.

'Gods above and below woman – why?' He all but howled and convulsively wrapped his arms around his wife because they had had years together but none of those years amounted to enough time. There was no more time and yet, there was no good reason to make an end.

(The red rain was thick and viscous as it coated glass panes already weeping cracks as beyond a tower of hume carved and assembled stone something angry and immense rose up ready to devour.)

Eloise opened her eyes and looked up, the years sliding away and leaving her seventeen and lovely all over again. She might have answered him with an angry retort, she might have said: because I was scared and I love you. She might have said: because this is where I've always wanted to be – where you are. Maybe, had she said those things, Falon would have become angry and distressed. Maybe he would have commanded her to leave him (not that that had ever worked in thirty odd years of marriage). He might have wept and told her that the only thing that could ever make him happier than having her beside him, would be knowing she was far away and _alive_. Maybe a great many things might have been said, or done, or felt, had there been life enough and time.

(The Ocean Naldoa screamed like a wild thing dying as the wave, negligent as a child's hand batting flat a castle in the sand, toppled the hume built tower.)

Falon and Eloise were dead – and there was nothing to be said.

* * *

**Archades: **

An angry or perhaps merely impatient sun beat down on the spires, towers, and bustling hordes of Imperials from high above. It was highly likely nothing more than ridiculous hyperbole to suggest that the single hot eye of the celestial king burned particularly intently upon the head of a single man, whose quick steps and racing thoughts were not quite fast enough for the suns liking. Almost certainly it was the height of vaulting hubris to consider such folly, but then again, stranger things had happened in the life of _this_ particular man.

'Uh…Balthier?' Vaan began, a bit awkwardly as he hurried after the older man through the throngs of people always packing the streets of the capital.

'What?' Balthier did not bother to turn around to look at him, or slow his brisk walk. It would be wrong to say that the sky pirate on sabbatical for indeterminate time was nervous, he walked with the same confident swagger and assured gait he always possessed, all the same, he was clearly distracted. Vaan, in contrast, was clearly confused, but this was a fairly familiar occurrence so for the most part nothing untoward seemed to be afoot.

(Insofar as one ignored the rather pertinent fact that the two were being followed; Balthier reckless to fault, nevertheless was very much_ not_ in ignorance of the fact that someone's scampering feet pattered parallel to his from the shadows and alleys of the capital's ardent district.)

'Well, um, I was wondering…' the younger, stockier, smaller man widened his strides until he was almost trotting beside Balthier. 'Uh…what's going on?'

Balthier almost smirked except that it wasn't overly amusing, 'Hmm, I'm impressed Vaan. You managed to resist exposing your staggering ignorance for considerably longer than I anticipated. One might almost have assumed you had managed to ascertain the plot for yourself. Ah well, progress must come in baby steps I suppose.'

'Hey,' Vaan growled looking around him curiously as Balthier slipped from the main Trant promenade and led him down a rickety alleyway, washing lines billowing like sails above their heads strung from opposing windows less than five feet apart. The scent of backed up drains and starch filled the air, as well the stroke of hot steam and baking bread. 'Insult me later.' Vaan insisted, able to intuit if not quite intellectualise that Balthier's penchant for insulting his cognitive function was more a habit to avoid answering unwanted questions than true desire to ridicule perceived ineptitude. 'I just want to know what's going on.'

'A great many things would be the simplest answer,' Balthier drawled stopping at the mouth of the alley as it opened up into a backstreet lined with small workshops and laundrettes. People buzzed past them; women in aprons carrying bales of unlaundered clothes and men in leathers carrying the aroma of hard work, hot ash and sweat on their backs like heavy loads. 'We seem to have stumbled upon a story with many intriguing subplots.'

Vaan frowned, he was mostly familiar with Balthier's tendency to rely on allegorical whimsy when he was either distracted, thinking too hard or both, all the same Vaan at least was able to differentiate fact from fiction. 'Right…so…?'

Balthier stepped out of the alley and started striding confidently down the street, weaving effortlessly around the workmen and washerwomen. Vaan hurried to keep up, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a gaggle of children chasing after a wooden hoop as it rolled and bounced over the uneven cobbles.

'So it is time to step up to the limelight.' Balthier pulled from his pocket a scrap of paper with a hastily scribbled address written across it. 'Incidentally, I don't suppose you have managed to catch a peek of our tagalong, hm?'

'No,' Vaan admitted a little put out but understanding perfectly well what Balthier referred to. 'They're hiding just behind that shed.' Vaan managed to indicate the location of their watcher without revealing that he knew anyone was there. He could just make out, from the corner of his eye, a tall willowy shadow half concealed in the depths of a ramshackle lean-to shed.

'I know,' Balthier sighed casually and elegantly avoiding looking in that direction. 'Well, I'm sure our inept spy shall make his or her presence known when it suits them.' Balthier sauntered off down the sloping street, effectively dismissing such inconveniences as his uninvited audience from his mind altogether. Contrary to popular opinion Balthier did not actively court, nor look for trouble, as he had more than ample evidence that trouble would come looking for him soon enough.

'But,' Vaan blinked after him, swiping a bead of sweat from his brow and disordering his dangling hair as he did so. 'What about –? '

Indolent and disinterested Balthier simply raised a hand over his head as he continued walking and clicked his fingers much in the manner a particularly well dressed and dandified shepherd might summon a wandering hound. 'Chop-chop Vaan I have something to show you.'

Vaan, being a well trained and faithful hound, immediately trotted off in pursuit of his master. He did not spare a glance toward the skulking shadow hiding behind the old shed. Therefore he did not see a pair of quizzical pink eyes blink from between the slates of a partially boarded up window. Crouched inside the darkened interior of the small shed, amid the detritus of old vegetable sacks, pieces of coal, ash and chicken droppings the Viera far from home wrinkled her nose against foul odours not found in her verdant native environment and twitched her ears. She listened to the sound of the two humes retreating footsteps for a moment more, then with hesitant, yet darting swiftness, Mjrn bolted from her hiding place and picked up her pursuit again.

She could hear the whispers of Mother Ivalice in her ears, comingled with the urgent clamouring of the earth beneath her feet and the echo of the wind slicing over the high hume towers overhead. She understood what they told her; she had dreamed nightmares of a red wave and the roots of a far off Wood rising to meet the deluge. She had seen her sister's face and heard the crash-scream of battle. Mjrn, never the greatest or the strongest of her sisters, knew that now it was she who was called to action.

Slipping after the smoke and gales hume that carried with him the scent of her sister like a fading lovers' embrace, Mjrn knew exactly what she must do. She must betray in order to save all that she held dear.

* * *

**Iona:**

The taste of nature perverted assaulted Fran's senses as she ran onto the dark tawny veldt of the beach. Instantly her feet began to sink into shifting ground but she did not slow, even as a sound like the sky falling and the ocean trying to drink itself rattled her mind and pained her ears. She saw the spindly spire of the lighthouse snap and shatter against a backdrop of thunderous surf beyond imagining.

'Now my sisters, to your positions!' L'Moi came to a stop beside Fran, calling out commands to the rest of her sorority as they fell into formation to protect the port, which was as much their own as it was the humes who had fled long hence.

'Hold firm, sisters – the Wood is with us.'

Formation perfect the first of serried ranks of Viera dropped to their knees, clawed hands digging deep into tufted grass upon the cliff face behind and above the small beach. At their backs other Viera moved forward, tapered fingers blurring through swirling eldritch patterns – writing power onto a canvas of thin air. All eyes watched the approaching terror, unblinking, unmoved, and utterly resolved come what may.

'This is no natural thing,' Fran whispered more to herself than her companion. 'This hate I feel, only a living heart could beat such fury.'

The tide had pulled back as if snatched by some unseen god's hand, the shore dredged dry of gentle waves that had soothed crushed salt and brittle sand for many centuries past. Above and ahead, rolling forward upon a wall of water, damnation surged. The ocean was blood and blood was the ocean. The sky could not compete and the sun's light became lost behind the hunched back of the ocean's rage.

And crowned upon the crest of death something more terrible than the Ocean's offended hate; Lente riding at the head of her vengeance.

Fran stood; a lone shadow thin and stretched across the sands. She stood alone and fragile as only the mortal can be before wave; she stood and she watched and she did not falter in the face of a hate that dwarfed mountains. Frothing red and dark and hideous, cresting above her, the wave awaited the teetering balance of equilibrium. In size so massive it seemed to Fran that she had already drowned and stood not on land but instead at the bottom of the abyssal plains of the ocean bed, looking up far above her to the waves breaking the surface.

'Now sisters!' L'Moi screamed in voice as proud as only a true daughter of Ivalice could be.

The wave towered, it roared, it screamed with the promise of a thousand deaths of crushing agony...and fell like an avalanche, like a waterfall, like all the tears in all Ivalice – and Ivalice rose to meet the red tide. Roots of deep soil tore free, grass seeded into air, air to solid soil transformed, and Viera screamed in silent chorus of will and might to stop the wave's passage.

Element to element clashed; blue green light swirled in the air as salt brine tasted dark soil earth and Ivalice fought herself to a standstill. Earth and water, a balance of elements thrown askew and an old answer discredited before anyone knew to question.

It was then, in the middle of destiny, in the middle of a beginning that was also an end that Viera eyes met Viera eyes; Fran small and lowly rooted to the sands and Lente riding high upon her death-bringing wave. The one saw the other in a moment to define the ages.

The battle had begun.

* * *

_A/N: Next up Lente Vs. Fran! Who wants to place their bets? _


	21. Chapter 21

**A Time Long Lost:**

_They come from far and wide, risking life and limb against the fiends that dominate the land. They come for her; they drop to one knee before her, half starved, delirious from lack of water and sunstroke, yet they look at her with wonder and awe. Some are poor nomads, some are wanderers' lost and found; some are much more than this. Some would claim themselves great men if such claims meant ought at all to she._

_For she is Lente; child of Ivalice, mother of her people. This devotion is her due. Poor men she can make great with only her favour and great men she will bring low with her refusal. She is Lente, she is Viera; she is the queen that has no king. She is Mother Ivalice's conduit upon the mortal world. _

_...And when he comes, shining like the sun, marching at the head of an army greater than any Ivalice has seen before, Lente stands before her great Wood, her bare feet planted solidly upon the earth, unmoved save where the warm breeze eddies in her long hair. _

_She watches the pennants flying against the blue sky; she watches the way the light bends and refracts off the tarnished metal he encloses his skin within. Such cleverness these humes have, to take from the mother her offerings of ore and make such things from it. She is proud, so very proud despite herself. She knows that no hume can be truly great, for Ivalice has decreed that they are for the Viera; that they be the answer but only to the question of the Viera. The humes are blind and weak and ill-equipped to live upon mother Ivalice's world. Yet she watches him stride towards her, so proud in his victory, so vital in his life and energy and for a moment Lente wonders – she wonders what this hume might make of Ivalice if he was ought else but servant to her. _

_She waits until he has dropped to one knee before her, his fair hair glinting in the sun, the back of his neck pinked and burned. She breathes in his scent, equal parts sweat and metal and war. A scent so quintessentially hume that it makes her head reel and her heart sing -and she breathes his name on a slow exhale as her fingers card his hair in benediction and greeting both._

'_Raithwall,' she says, 'Your war is won.' It is not a question, for she is Lente and she does not ask questions. 'You have returned now to me.' Lente knows not why the humes must fight and kill each other with such regularity, but she has never let it trouble her. It is good that they should thin their own herd so that she and her brethren might take for their own the very best. Raithwall, a king among these scattered and divisive humes, Lente has declared for herself long hence. After all she is mother, she is favoured child of Ivalice, and thus should she not have the best to herself? _

_Yet when he looks up at her with eyes like the sky Lente finds her certainty wavering, even as he clasps her hand in his calloused blunt fingered paw and presses it to his stubbled cheek, rough and baked by the sun. _

'_Lente,' he breathes her name, but not with reverence, instead regret and something else lingers on his breath, 'Lente...my love for you is undiminished – but I cannot stay here with you forevermore.' _

_Lente blinks, surprise apparent upon her face. She has never been refused before. She does not understand. 'Is not your war over?' _

'_Yes,' he smiles, broad and white and fierce as the wolves that prowl the plains, 'and now I must lead. I must unite all humes so that we might grow strong.' _

_Once more Lente is confused. 'Grow strong?' Why for would he say such things; does her love not realise that the humes are merely mother Ivalice's gift to her favourite children? Does he not know that Viera have but one question and one answer and that all humes must find in Viera their only answer in turn? Has she not told him this already? _

'_Yes,' Raithwall turns his eyes away and this time Lente is in no confusion over the emotion in his eyes; guilt shows in a thousand different ways. 'I am but a mortal man; i will not live so long as you my sweet. I must establish a dynasty of my own if this peace I have fought and bled for shall last.' _

'_And I must have daughters,' Lente points out swiftly, perplexed as Raithwall rises to his feet and pulls away from her. 'This was the agreement. You are to be the father of my daughters; this was the price when my sisters and I joined your war.' _

_Raithwall looks chagrined yet his abashment is false. She sees in his eyes that no longer see her that his heart holds no guilt whatsoever. 'I must have sons.' He tells her calmly. 'I must have _hume _sons – and this, lady Lente, you cannot give me.' _

'_Wait...' Lente's hands flail at thin air as she watches, her feet shackled to the earth, as the hume king Raithwall turns his back on her and walks away – back to his army. Lente knows not what this feeling is that contracts her chest and makes it so hard to breathe. She clutches at her chest and feels her heart bleed. She watches the father of her daughters unborn mount his chocobo and ride away - and though she is Viera, and chosen of Ivalice, for the first time Lente realises that there is nothing she can do. For what can be done – what can any Viera do - if the answer to their one question refuses them? _

_It is then that the rage comes, sudden as a hurricane tearing through the remnants of her complacency. _

'_I am Lente,' she screams so that the circling scavenger birds chorus her shout in loud cawing overhead. 'I AM LENTE.' She screams once more at the retreating back of Raithwall's great army and watches as not a single head turns to heed her. _

'_I am Lente,' she whispers one final time, clawed fingers scraping over her flat stomach as she dropped to her knees. There is no answer. She is Lente and suddenly that does not seem to matter at all._

_

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_

**708 O.V: Iona**

'Now sisters – Now!'

Earth rolled like an unfurled blanket snapped out in the air as a hundred Viera dug claws into the soil and pressed their will against the will of the land; from the ocean bed silt rose and grass sprouted from the sandy beach; rock that had dwelt for millennia deep beneath a watery bed punched up from the shoreline rushing forward with a speed and motion that was completely unnatural. When the blood wave hit it smashed into a solid wall of compacted earth studded with ageless fossils of creatures long since lost to the annuls of time. The rebounding current contorted the mountain of water causing dozens of smaller, yet more violent, waves to rear up and assault the earthen wall in turn. The sound was akin to a thunderclap caught in the barrel of a drum. The reverberations jarred the foundations of the island and caused the sky above to scream. The clouds rent and tore like bloodied silk, twisting in a tight knot; a noose to twist around the sun's light. Lightning threatened as the ocean reared back for yet another assault and a thousand liquid white horses smashed to pieces against a wall of earth ripped from the very womb of Ivalice. The sky bled red, the wave crashed over the top of the wall and the thunder pulsed with the heartbeat of war.

'We cannot allow the beach to drown.' L'Moi's hands moved in a blur that threw soft autumnal light into the air in the manner of a mirage and from that near gentle motion vines sprang from nothing to create a dense net in the air. The net could not catch the deluge but it could strain it and weaken the torrent.

Viera began to charge the earthen wall, leaping up upon battlements of their own creation to face the oncoming tide; their own vulnerability the last thing on their minds. The first to make the leap and face the flood was a Viera without a Wood to call her own, but a Viera who claimed instead affinity with all Ivalice.

Thus it was that Fran was first to face the Mother upon her angry tide.

'So you have come to me, have you daughter?' Adorned in naught but chains of kelp and a gossamer tracery of blood that no ocean could wash clean Lente was hideous in her beauty as she rode the main body of the wave. Her hair glittering with saline crystals tangled around her loose limbs as she surveyed the massed Viera beneath her and then focused ancient, angry eyes once more upon Fran.

Fran stood frozen; blood and brine stung her nostrils and the tempest above and below and all around her twisted her hair and threw it in her face like a thousand lashes, yet she could not move, could not even reach for the axe at her hip. This was not fear that held her transfixed, for fear alone had not the strength to hold her so. Fran knew not what she felt when she met the eyes of the Viera before her, save that her eyes felt that they should bleed and her knees should collapse for surely this...this fiend before her could not be Viera.

'You,' the other drew her lips back from teeth feral and sharp, in a grimace of hatred and recognition, 'You are she who would throw down the old. You are she whose call woke me. You are she who would supplant my will and claim new paths, are you not.'

Fran stared, the roar of war lost to her ears, her mind whispering ancient warnings, her instincts, those that would have bound her unthinking to Wood and Way all these years, told her she stood in the presence of the divine and the untouchable. Words would not come, save those that came from a place beyond all reason.

'I am Fran.' She said into the face of the wave, the storm, and the hatred within the other. 'That is all I am; that is everything I am.'

The other Viera threw back her head and laughed; laughter that howled. Her hair spreading outwards in the electrified gale, sparking with lightning, and still the woman laughed. 'And I am Lente,' she screamed into the tempest of war raising her arms high above her head, spine bowing. Spirals of water, pulsing with the ink clouds of spilled blood dark as pestilence twined serpent-like around those upraised arms and thick coils of water wrapped around Lente's body. 'And that is all I have left!'

Fran staggered backwards as a tendril of ocean made solid lashed out and slapped her down onto her knees; sea salt made cruel by another's malice tore at her eyes and scored her flesh, intent on choking her. Fran dug her fingers into the earthen mound ridge as the weight of that animate water pushed down on her spine and tried to rip her from the wall and into the churning abyss below. She began to drown in thin air. From around her she heard the cries of alarm as tentacles of living ocean struck out at the other Viera. Despite the roar of the water slowly crushing her down Fran heard the shrieking cry as one young Lanlet warrior fell from the wall and was devoured by wavelets that rose to meet her hungry as starving hell hounds.

Lente, wreathed in serpent coils of water armour lightly stepped off the crest of the living wave and dug her toes into the wall ridge. 'My children,' she purred reaching out for one of the viera nearest her with a languid hand that nevertheless moved faster than the eye could follow. The viera maiden, bow forgotten in her hand, found her gasp of surprise turning quickly to a strangled choking sound as Lente's fingers closed around her throat. Lente smiled pressing her body close to the dazed and confused viera so that she might taste the child's skin with her lips and whisper sweetly into her ear as any mother might, 'Daughter you are so proud, so beautiful; yet so very, very fragile.'

The Lanlet Viera felt her eyelids flutter as her eyes drew heavy. Lente's voice was a spell and balm to calm all fear. The bow slipped from her suddenly numb fingers and she sighed, her mind suddenly transported to a time years ago when she had known the gentle cradle of her mother's arms and the sweet scent of her love. Lente's hand moved to cup the Viera's cheek. 'You love your mother, don't you child?' She whispered soothingly.

The Viera swayed, long legs not able to sustain her, '...yes...' she whispered through heavy lips, the words difficult to form. Lente smiled burying her own face into the neck of the child she held in her arms.

Feet away Fran struggled to her knees, lungs screaming with lack of oxygen as she became almost completely enveloped in a spreading cage of water. Her vision was fading away, eaten by spots of black and white, but even so she could not drag her eyes from Lente. No one on the earthen wall could do 'ought but watch, transfixed and horrified.

'You are a good child.' Lente cooed to the ensorcelled Viera swaying in her arms, and then she punched her free hand through the Viera's chest. 'You have a pure heart.'

The Viera maiden's mouth opened on an exclamation of surprise, eyes wide and wounded, as blood stole words from her lips and cascaded down her chin. Lente withdrew her hand and the Viera crumpled to her knees. Almost negligently Lente kicked the Viera's carcass over the edge of the wall where the hungry waves were waiting. 'Yes...' she smiled clutching her still beating prize in one gore soaked hand, 'such a pure heart you had my child.'

'NO!' The scream echoed in the roar of the wind and rain and ocean spray. Lente turned, the viera maiden's heart still clenched in her fist, as L'Moi charged her, eyes red as purest madness, weaponless save for her own bare hands.

Laughing again Lente cast away the useless dead organ and threw open her arms wide to welcome L'Moi's heedless charge. 'Yes my children...come to me!'

* * *

**707 O.V: Iona – A Love Story**

_Fantl checked over the earthenware bowls and dried herbs tied in string which formed the bulk of her wares; the other market vendors were setting up their stalls around her and the early morning breeze brought with it the gentle tang of sea brine. Fantl looked up at the faultless sky and then down to the pier; a smile twitched her lips. Her eyes scanned the dock for _his _ship. _

_Ethain..._

_He was from Balfoheim, which in and of itself would have made him interesting to Fantl, but it was more than just that which made her hope to see him make port today. Ethain was sweet; his courtship awkward and fumbling. She found it amusing that he truly believed he was being sly and worldly when he told her stories that she knew simply could not be true. Still she knew that behind his tall tales there beat a true and dear heart and that was enough for her; that and the fact that he called Balfonheim home; Balfonheim where the pirates lived. _

'_Fantl love, can I 'ave a few sprigs of Rosemary?' _

_Blinking in surprise Fantl turned to old mother Sproggins whose creased face and bristled chin did nothing to diminish the kindness in her small watery eyes. Ears quivering a little in embarrassment at her inattentiveness (L'Moi was forever telling her she was a daydreamer) Fantl plucked up some of the scented herb and wrapped it for the old woman._

'_Here we are Mrs Sproggins; would you like some sage honey as well?' _

'_Ahh...well,' Old lady Sproggins sucked in her cheeks, which turned convex around the gaps of missing teeth dotting her wizened jaw as those sunken eyes fixed on the jars of honey hungry, 'Y'see I'm a bit tight on Gil at t'moment love...' _

_Fantl smiled warmly and picked up a small jar of the honey placing it into the old woman's gnarled and claw-like hand, 'Then you should save your Gil, Mrs Sproggins and accept this gift from me.' _

_The old woman's face contorted into a million creases as she smiled, 'Yer a good gel, Fantl, bless yer heart.' Mrs Sproggins quickly tucked the honey and rosemary away in her woven bag and limped off with surprising speed for such an ancient and frail hume. Fantl called out goodbye to the woman and waved. Her ears twitched just once and a secret little smile tickled her lips as she heard another quick step over to her stall a moment before warm, blunt fingers clasped her waist._

'_Yer too nice,' Ethain whispered into her neck as he nuzzled her, 'That old crone schmoozes free good off'a everyone she can.' _

_Fantl gently pulled away, stifling a giggle with one hand and busying herself with rearranging her wares. 'I know.' She admitted after a moment. 'But she is old and a kindly soul; a jar of honey is not such a large thing to gift such as she.' _

'_Tsk,' Ethain clucked his tongue, but his eyes were warm and fond, 'Yer'll need to toughen up some if'n we're t'go to Balfonheim. Them Balfonheim folks will eat yer alive if'n they think yer soft.' _

_Fantl simply smiled away his concern, 'Kindness is not a weakness; I believe there is goodness in everyone.' _

_Ethain laughed and it was not so terribly bitter, 'Yet it's the pirates' yer want to find.' He shook his head. 'Yer a daft one, me duck, but I love yer anyway.' _

_This time Fantl's smile was much wider as she swiftly looked around, ears twitching keenly, before stepping forward and twinning her lean arms around her humes neck. 'I love you too.' She told Ethain sincerely and watched her silly hume blush to the tips of his ears as his arms rose to tentatively enfold her right here in the centre of the marketplace. _

'_I'll show you the whole world,' Ethain told her seriously, earnest as a little boy, 'I'll make you happy.' _

_Fantl nodded seeing her own face reflected in his eyes. 'I believe you.' She said simply and it would never have occurred to Fantl to suspect that they were both lying._

_

* * *

_

**Iona 708 O.V: The Earthen Wall:**

Madness is its own liberation; thus it was that L'Moi alone could face Lente without falling under her spell. Throwing herself forward the Elder Mother of the Lanlet-Downe Viera charged this fiend who wore the face of their revered mother Lente without thought of consequence.

'Fiend! Monster – your foul heart I shall rip from your breast!' L'Moi slashed with her claws, fingers raking through thick, viscous coils of water. She ducked a lashing tentacle, rolled and shoved her fist through clinging, icy cold liquid armour to open a wide gash across the slick skin of her opponent's belly. Lente hissed, red eyes narrowing in anger and surprise.

'You dare...!' Faster than thought Lente's bloody hands moved and then it was L'Moi staggering back, clutching at her bleeding abdomen. Lente laughed. 'Little mother you are nothing. This life you cling to is nothing. I will bring you peace in death.'

'Never!' Darting back from Lente's blindingly fast lunge, L'Moi danced away across the earthen wall. She dived low on her belly as a serpent strike of water rushed her back, intent on flinging her from the wall. L'Moi did not even bother to look back as she leapt up and ran forward, her eyes fixed upon the Viera encased in water merely feet from her.

'Sister Fran,' L'Moi plunged her hands through the cloying dark water, reached beyond its numbing pressure to grasp strong flesh and pull Fran to her feet '– fight at my side sister; for we are Viera true.'

Sputtering, vile ice blood and salt choking her throat, Fran rose unsteadily to her feet and stood beside L'Moi. Both Viera fixed eyes on the monster before them and Lente in turn faced them both with cool intent.

'And so it begins,' Lente murmured opening wide her arms and letting the sinuous coils of water fall from her like discarded chains. 'For Viera; for Ivalice, my children, let us see what the true path shall be.'

Lente charged; L'Moi charged; Fran charged – and Ivalice screamed.

* * *

_A/N: Okay this was officially the worst chapter to write that I have ever encountered. I'm not very happy with it now, but this is the best I can do. As you can see Fran's first encounter with Lente didn't go so well; I don't think Fran's ever been beaten so easily :0. Still it happened for a reason. The rematch will be epic. _


	22. Chapter 22

_A/N: Okay so my living room ceiling sprang a leak; I came down with the flu and I temporarily lost this chapter completely in the ether of my hard-drive…thus I am late with the update *sigh* On the plus side – you get this update on my birthday! Yay birthday; yay encroaching senility!_

_

* * *

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**707 O.V: Balfonheim**

_Filth and grime and the reek of vomit hung like miasma in the air; somewhere fish rooted in mouldering crates and the stink of too many unwashed bodies in too confined a space shimmered in the air like a rippling heat mirage. Above her head a flawless blue sky seemed too far off, the pristine splendour interrupted by the subdued growl of low flying airships hovering in holding pattern over the aerodrome like a swarm of bloodsucking insects. She walked along the warped boards of the dock, her heels striking an angry tattoo across soft wood; tac-tac, tac-tac, loud and dissonant every step spoke volumes for her mood. The frothing water lapping at the struts of the pier a little way out to sea was thick with things best left unmentioned; the detritus of an uncomfortable mix of poor sanitation and the trappings of dissolute excess. She shuddered and tried hard not to inhale too deeply less the inexorable stench became a permanent part of her being. _

'_Fantl love – what's got yer knickers in a twist now?' Ethain jogged beside her, a puppy, or a mongrel snapping at her heels, his ire spiking against her already overwhelmed senses like ammonia and hot metal. _

'_It...this place…,' Fantl shoved her hair behind her shoulders, ears twitching as she caught the unpleasant echoes of a man and woman rutting in an alley while a bedraggled seeq violently voided the pickled contents of his stomach into the water a few yards away. 'This place is revolting!' She exclaimed close to tears. Was this the feeling of dreams breaking? _

_Ethain laughed and, oblivious or merely callously uncaring of her heartbroken distress, threw an arm up and around her shoulders, 'Ah yer daft mare, this is _Balfonheim _what did yer expect?' _

_Fantl jerked away from him, fists curling at her sides, 'I left my Wood for this?' She spoke through clenched teeth, hissing rage, yet anger gave way to a desperate question; she thought of her mother and leader, she thought of her sisters back in Lanlet. She thought of the hopes and dreams of exploration she had harboured and cherished so close to her heart for so long. Was this truly what she had dreamed of all these years? This cesspit of hume degradation could not possibly be the destination of her heart's desire. _

'_Fantl,' Ethain sighed sobering immediately and regarding her with sympathetic eyes that appeared false to her for the first time. 'I warned yer love.' He said simply. 'The port's still trying to get back on its feet after that bloody fiasco with the Nabradians and bleeding Balthier Bunansa making war over our sodding 'eads.' Ethain shakes his head irritably, 'Be thankful I waited 'til now t'bring yer here; place was a right bollocked up shambles back when; least we got the pub back and runnin' now.' _

_Still breathing shallowly Fantl felt a flicker of hope rise up in her chest, 'It will get better?' She asked timorous and hopeful. 'It will not always be this…awful?' _

_Ethain did not even blink, 'Course not.' He smiled and sidled closer, 'Now let me take yer t'White Cap an' get yer a drink.' _

'_I don't drink,' Fantl reminded him hesitantly but did not pull away as he clasped an arm around her waist. Ethain chuckled warmly._

'_Trust me love, Balfonheim improves when yer got a drink or three in yer.'_

_

* * *

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**708 O.V: Iona**

'For Ivalice and for Viera, my daughters!'

Lente laughed throwing wide her arms in a feint; as fast as the water had fallen from her once more it rose up, moisture drawn from the very air. Fran, a beat behind L'Moi, was able to swerve and leap over the solid fist of water as it roared through the air – but L'Moi was not so fortunate. A second tentacle of water erupted from the ocean and struck the Lanlet viera mother with enough force to shatter bones. L'Moi did not have time to draw breath, let alone scream, as her body was flung upwards, a torn and battered leaf upon tumultuous currents.

Fran burst into motion; the width of the top of the earthen wall was no more than six feet across and with each strike of Lente's living ocean more of the wall began to erode, yet Fran paid this no heed. Serpents of ocean tore free from the raging waters, rising thirty feet above her head and crashing down with the force of breaking dams and floods unknown but Fran had eyes only for L'Moi, caught in the twisted vice of the water's grasp.

'You see my daughter – you see the futility of all you fight for?' Lente, serene at the centre of the destruction she wrought, watched with calm impassivity as Fran ran, leapt, dived across the earthen wall, magick cupped and caged within her palms.

'Thundara!' Twisting, spinning, forcing gravity to give up its hold upon her limbs, Fran launched herself into the air as she released the lightning summoned to hand. Twin bolts of electricity seared through the air, the first splitting the sinuous limb of water holding L'Moi like an axe might sunder a sturdy oak. The Lanlet mother began to fall, yet in mid-air twisted and threw up her arms. Fox-fire whispers of light and magick danced about her falling body as she tumbled, a comet plummeting towards the ocean depths. In the time it took for Fran to land back on her feet the earthen wall had answered L'Moi's will and a mossy promontory appeared between the viera and the hungry ocean. L'Moi's landing was thus a gentle one, yet the Viera mother was not swift in rising.

Meanwhile the second bolt of thundara sang through the air, dancing through a bruised sky and streaking headlong for Lente. The ancient viera narrowed her eyes and allowed her cloak of ocean to drop from her shoulders once more. Negligently she raised a hand, as if seeking to halt the thundara's passage through the air with her flat palm alone.

'Wood to me,' Lente murmured as a wall of fern, bracken and creeping ivy climbed the air before her. The thundara struck foliage, burned and sizzled out before so much as an errant spark could reach the former viera queen. Flicking blood crusted fingers in absent gesture Lente allowed the lattice mesh of leaves and vine to fall away again. She turned to Fran as the ocean rose to her command once more.

'Now daughter, let me look upon you.'

* * *

**708 O.V: Ruins of Mount Bur-Omisace**

For as far as these things went, Ragnarok decided that the hollowed out ruin of a distant god's corporeal seat was not such a bad place to lay his head; the many, many thousands of tons of rubble strewn about in the Silverfloe glacier made for a nice nest, while the heavy snow fall offered good camouflage. All in all Ragnarok could think of worse places to be, namely the farther reaches of sentient awareness and the great void of eternity, which while familiar to Ragnarok, was not exactly a very stimulating place to be stuck in for all time unending.

It was a pity therefore that once he had fulfilled his purpose and destroyed all sentient life on Ivalice that great and yawning abyss was exactly where he would end up once more. It was also highly unlikely that he'd have opportunity to leave it again either, what with all the self-aware races of Ivalice being dead and all.

Still there would be some advantages to returning to the great vacuum of eternity, for one thing in the empty reaches of non-existence no one was rude enough to shoot missiles at him. Cracking one eyes open a slither, the brilliant cold light of his all-devouring pupils mostly hidden under heavy scaled lids, Ragnarok shifted his massive form just a tad as a barrage of missiles exploded against his spine. The feeling was not unlike mild heat rash, irritating but hardly worth the effort of a response.

Ragnarok sighed, his great lungs exhaling a cyclone of superheated breath. That little sigh spun up over the acres of rubble and across the fractured platelets of the glacier melting through ice a hundred metres thick. _Hmm, _eyeing the flotilla of buzzing metal and mist insects swarming above his head, Ragnarok found himself wondering when he would receive the sign that he should make good on his purpose and lay waste to the world of man. Really, he didn't see any reason to move from his comfortable nest for anything less than a divine directive, yet if these little mortals would persist in invading his privacy that might change.

It was then, while pondering upon such weighty matters as to why it was he had been summoned simply to lay idle for so long, that one of the mist insects released another volley of screeching missiles through the air towards him. Ragnarok, comfortable in his own immortality, did not react - until one of the missiles shot straight into his half-lidded eye. With a startled snort of outrage, which just so happened to melt several tonnes of solid rock to slag, Ragnarok reared up upon his front legs. Another barrage of missiles struck his flank dancing down the tapered bulge of his rib cage and towards his underbelly, and while this attack was no more effective than the first, this time Ragnarok - the ultimate arbiter of fate, great dragon of destruction - was _irritated_. Burning ice-sun eyes flaring wide Ragnarok roared loud enough to loose avalanches upon the peaks of distant mountains and crack open fissures in the ice deep enough to reach the core of Ivalice itself.

As he rose up, higher than the mountains around him, Ragnarok blinked his injured eye and fixed his ire upon the buzzing swarm before him. Well, he reasoned, he was created to destroy all life on Ivalice – surely it wouldn't matter if he went ahead and made a start ahead of schedule?

Ragnarok roared again – and set the sky above Kerwon aflame.

* * *

**708 O.V: Iona**

_Wham! _

Blood hit the sand a split second before a broken body followed suit; twisted limbs and shredded flesh bounced and rolled across grass strewn sand and liquid red seeped into granules of salt glinting vermillion in the unnatural twilight. Howls of grief rent the air trailing in the wake of a forest of arrows as magick hissed and the ocean groaned in anguish.

This was a battle obscene and phantasmal; it should never have happened, yet now it seemed that nothing could stop the bloodshed.

Repeated peals of Thundaga smashed into solid walls of dark water. Black liquid twisted into chains and lashed down upon a battered earthen wall trailing a million fissures down through the soil, racing to greet eager lapping tongues of ocean brine. Atop the wall, silhouetted in violet cloud and lightning spears, claws flared, nails raked skin, feet spun out kicking and vicious, fists punched, and all the while more blood arced. The enemy was but one woman alone, yet she was legion strong; the Lanlet-Downe Viera fell like leaves from a dying tree.

All save two and one was not even of Iona's Wood.

'Shatterheart!'

Lunging forward while L'Moi staggered ungainly to her feet, Fran led the charge, eldritch light spinning ghost pinwheels through the air in her wake, the tail to her personal comet. Her movements are no less ferocious for the fact that they are well familiar, yet as with all the previous attacks her opponent seems undaunted. One kick is deflected by her combatant, who seemed able to anticipate Fran's moves as if they were her own, the second is swallowed by a wall of water; the third striking against flesh, the sharp points of Fran's double heel catching flesh and tearing open a wide gash that leaks like water. A hiss of sudden pain is the immediate reply, but then the downward arc of bloodied claws opened rivulets of pain wide and deep from Fran's hairline to her chin as lightning threatened in the roaring sky.

Fran rocked back, blinking hot fluid from her eyes, smelling her own blood on the salt-tang air. Around her neck the broken amulet dribbled with a coating of her own blood. Fran bared her teeth feeling the torn flesh of her face crease and open anew as rage, pure and simple, propelled her forward.

Parry, break, bleed and dance apart only to come together again, like ancient tides, like broken pieces of a puzzle that should not fit together in any way save within primal nightmare Fran and Lente came at each other. Already they had danced this dance for many minutes now, the steps old and stilted yet the intent to kill remains undiminished.

'You cannot defeat me, child,' Lente surges forward like an ocean poured into the wraith form of a Viera revenant. 'You speak of a heart shattered, you fight like one who has made loneliness her bosom companion, yet you fight me still.' Hands strike out, bloodless white snakes, and claws rake the air seeking more blood to spill; Fran pivots, rocking back on her heels once more before calling forth her magick and loosing thundaga. Lente dances back, mimicking the air rather than the water as she dodges the attack with superior ease.

'Why do you fight; you are no more alive than I.' Lente queried more rhetorical than expecting response. She flicks Fran's blood from her fingertips nonchalantly ignoring the great gaping gash seeping dark blood from her side. 'Unbound by Wood and Way you are as I am; a vessel filled only with regret.' Lente said.

A natural lull falls halting the violence as Fran struggles for breath and Lente stands within her wall of water, tangled hair swimming in currents that defy nature simply by being and regards Fran with distant curiosity. 'I wonder daughter, do you know yourself?' Lente's eyes narrowed. 'Your voice awoke me; your spirit is not as these others. You are not a weak sapling among many such weaklings. Yet neither are you strong. You are not what you were born to be, that is clear, yet you still remain to become that which you seek to be.'

Fran stared back at this creature before her, 'I will not speak to you; this question you ask is one you have asked before. I have no answer to give save that which has been spoken hence; nor wish I to give more to you than you can take from me through force.'

Fran leapt then and spiralled through the air as chains of water, sporting faces of twisted agony, drowning mouths gaping wide and housing spinning vortexes, lunged at her.

'Thundaga!' There is a vicious snarling hiss of rising steam as magicked lightning and water clash and reform into another element that aids neither combatant overmuch. Fran lands on her feet, muscles burning but holding firm, heels scraping gouges through the packed soil of the earthen wall. Claws digging into the soil to stop herself slipping over the edge Fran gathered her limbs beneath her and surged forward, couerl-like.

Lente laughed spinning through a dancing maelstrom, wearing her towering column of ocean like a wealthy hume lady might wear a ball gown. Pirouetting like a top the water cyclones passed fallen viera not swift enough to leap aside and those, pressed up against the edge of the earthen wall who have no place of safety to leap to fall into the crashing surf. They do not surface; the ocean sucks them down whole.

* * *

**708 O.V. Archades – The Artisans Quarter**

Deep inside a cavernous warehouse, which in actuality proved to be a hangar disguised as a disused munitions store secreted within the innocuous setting of Trant's artisan quarter, three men stand before the unveiled form of an airship not too greatly dissimilar to the Strahl in design – at least superficially.

'It's all to spec Master Balthier; just like yer commissioned.' Ebon Hardradda, once of Draklor and many other places that are best left unspoken, patted the outer hull of the ship he had spent the last several months constructing secretly right under the noses of both the judiciary and the senate. 'Helped a lot that yer was able to pass us on some of the Draklor scrap.' He caressed a large, scarred and calloused hand over the silvered hull. 'Gods but I haven't 'ad a project like this, one t'really get me teeth int,' since yer old man was building Bahamut.'

Balthier Bunansa tall and stately and looking so prosaically out of place in this very much illegal setting that he could be nothing else but the owner of this illicit hangar and its very much prohibited contents eyed the other man dryly. 'Yes quite. Thank you for the comparison; I dare say I should be flattered.'

Allowing his own fingers to ghost over the ship's paintwork, a metallic shimmering pale that spoke of a heat that would burn without warmth – or the rays of the sun concentrated to such a degree that the flames would be all but invisible - Balthier studied the ship with a critical eye. He had made a career gambling his luck upon the certainty of his own convictions. He observed no laws save those he deemed right and rarely concerned himself with the consequences of his own actions; after all when one sails through life convinced that one is always correct in his assumptions (if not always morally unimpeachable, but then again morality is nowt more than a fashion accessory in this life) then a man does not need to question himself over much. Even when he is wrong Balthier generally took the view that it was merely a matter of poor timing. He is not so much incorrect in his beliefs as it is a matter that the rest of Ivalice simply hasn't caught up with his reasoning.

'And her engine – did you also follow my specification regarding the Solaris generator?'

A man might be right and true in his conviction but all the same it was only good manners to take a moment to consider before unleashing something like this – this airship beyond all others – upon the world stage. Balthier had fallen before; he had crashed and burned, yet he had so far refrained from taking the rest of Ivalice with him. He finds himself now wondering if perhaps today, with this last gamble, he has stepped fully into his benighted father's footsteps and set into motion a construct capable of bringing down the sky and everyone underneath it.

Ebon scratches his blunt fingers through the wild reddish whiskers of his left mutton-chop, 'Aye.' He agreed, a note of caution touching upon his tone. 'Put it in just like yer stated in yer instructions.' Hardradda shook his head, small robin egg eyes glittering with a jittery glow as he turned back to the ship. 'Forget Bahamut, if'n this girl flies the whole of Ivalice will never be the same.'

'Uh...Balthier?' Vaan, all but forgotten, clears his throat, eyeing the airship with a mixture of trepidation and eagerness. Perhaps unduly influenced by Balthier or perhaps not, but Vaan has always felt that the Strahl is the perfect airship. Yet this ship, sleek and strangely dangerous in white and silver and ice blue is something else. The Strahl is a moth, or a butterfly, which flies like an eagle through the sky, but this vessel does not hide her lights. This ship is a sword, a rapier, to cut the very sky in twain - and if Vaan can see this so clearly he finds himself wondering just what is going on that Balthier is making weapons to tear apart the sky.

'What is it Vaan?' Balthier turns to him, a guarded expression on his face but something sharp in his languid brown eyes. He watches Vaan as keenly as any hunting bird stalking the clouds above.

Vaan opens his mouth but his tongue locks before he can speak a simple syllable. Being tongue-tied is hardly an unfamiliar occurrence for him but this time it is not a lack of words, but instead a need to find the right ones that renders him mute. He wants to demand that Balthier tell him what is really going on. Fran is gone, there's a stranger hiding just outside this hangar, a stranger who has followed them all through the ardent sector of Archades and Balthier doesn't seem to care. Balthier is being set up for treason and somebody might be trying to use him against Larsa, but more than that people are trying to _kill_ Balthier once more, and despite what the senior sky pirate might say, people didn't generally do that unless Balthier had done something – or was about to do something – that he really shouldn't.

'Well?' Balthier queried arching a brow and folding his arms over his chest, 'are you planning to pose a question or am I merely supposed to critique you on the masterful impression of a landed bass you appear to be performing, hm?'

Vaan snapped his jaws closed with a glare (and accidentally bit his tongue at the same time.)

'What's the Solaris engine?' He asked at last and any surprise he might feel at his own question is forgotten when he sees, by the brief flare in Balthier's eyes, that he has found the right question after all. Still the older man merely allows a faint smirk to dance across his features for a moment before turning around and beckoning for Vaan to step forward.

'Why don't you climb aboard and tell me? I built this ship for you, after all. You might as well become acclimated.' Balthier's dark eyes threw a laughing glance over his shoulder as he tapped a control panel on the ship's hull to lower the docking door ramp. 'I have an inkling you shall be needing Solaris soon enough.' He paused, one step on the boarding ramp's lowest step. 'I have a feeling we shall all be needing Solaris very soon indeed.'


	23. Chapter 23

_A/N: I'm so sorry everyone (and I bet you're tired of hearing this- if anyone is still reading at all) but this story is absolute murder to write. I have been wrestling with this chapter for months. I've gotten myself into a tangled mess of sub-plots which I am trying very hard to smooth out so that this story will finally get somewhere! All the same I am very sorry for how long it has taken me to update. _

_P.S - Happy New Year (2011) everyone ;)_

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* * *

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**707 O.V: Balfonheim**

_She sits on the edge of the bed, lousy with fleas, and she can hear the man and his whore in the room next to the one she shares with Ethain. The reek of old sweat and dried fish, brine and vomit that is Balfonheim has wriggled like maggots deep under her skin. She breathes it in and she breathes it out. She can no longer hear the song of the Mother, or the sweet voice of the Wood. _

_She sits on the bed and can feel the life growing within her, deep like a canker, it infests her being, tainted and spoiled. She thinks her child will be born a fish, a rotted fish with burst and milky eyes, flaking scales peeling away from greyed flesh, and it will stink. It will stink just like this port, just like this tiny, filthy lodging room, just like Ethain when he finally staggers back from the Whitecap reeking of bad ale and strange women. It will stink just like she does now. _

_Fantl sits on the edge of the bed and she thinks this is it. This is life; this is what it means to live. Green leaves and verdant soil or rotten boardwalks and grimy stone hovels, this is what life is. It stinks. It is rotten like a dead fish. It is flawed and painful and she does not think it is worth it. _

"This is what we are," _Fantl whispers as outside and from below her window she can hear the distant strains of terror as a man pleads for his life. She hears the howl as the man's kneecaps are shattered because he could not pay his dues. She hears him mewling like a new born in the gutter under her window as his assailants walk away. On the other side of the too thin wall she can hear the man beat his whore because he thinks his gil gives him the right. She can smell the blood, both old and new that spatters the floor. She can taste the stale sorrow in the air. This is a place of dreams turned sour; this is the travesty of freedom. This is the reward for the foolhardy and the selfish. This is filth and this is stench. This is the life she chose. _

"This is the sound of one heart beating." _She tells the baby inside her that is both perverted miracle and gift unasked for. _"This is what we are and will be no more."

* * *

**708 O.V. Iona**

Thundaga died in the air, sizzling wet and futile in the wet and bloodied air; the maelstrom rose and fell in regular contractions as the last will of defiance ebbed. Through it all Lente, monstrous and invincible stood tall, saturnine in her judgement and secure in her madness.

"So you fall, do you daughter?" She reaches out a hand, kneeling beside the fallen child, the little lost one who is so very, very young yet feels so very old in her bones. The blood clad fingers that rake through Fran's hair are almost gentle. "I would weep for you my child, as once I wept rivers for us all, but I have learned it is better that I break you."

Fran lay panting on her stomach upon the battered earthen wall, unable to lift so much as her head; her breathing painful and defeated. To die in battle had always stood as a likely fate for Fran; in truth she had no fear of such...and yet...

_...Partners then Fran? You and I shall be the stuff of legends..._

Fran stirred, red eyes mere slits and almost lost to the wildness of her rage but she made herself stare up into the face of Lente. "I will not break." The words are a pledge, a conviction. To die in battle, yes, to die without her partner, no, this fate Fran would oppose. Feebly she tried to lever herself up on her elbows, muscles failing her even as her conviction strengthened.

Lente merely smiled continuing to stroke Fran's hair with the infinite gentleness of a mother, "I smell your blood and your pain, child. You are one who has lived to defy gods; you are one who has made Viera more than 'ought be. You stand against the weave, in opposition to the pattern." Lente's fist closed around Fran's scalp and she roughly jerked her head back, forcing her neck into a painful arch. "I would love you child, for your defiance, but alas my heart to hatred has too long be wed." Grace in every sinew and the flicker of her slender fingers Lente curved the claws of her free hand around Fran's throat, awaiting only her own leisure before she tore loose the meat of Fran's trachea.

It was then that the broken tear, affixed still on its chain around Fran's neck, spilled free to dangle like a tantalising curse and catch the light of destruction in a rainbow prism. Lente's fingers scratched spasmodically across Fran's neck, opening shallow wounds even as her eyes narrowed to furious slits and focused solely on the tear. She hissed savagely.

"No..." claws flashed and the chain broke in the same moment that Lente uncoiled, stepping back from Fran as if afraid clutching the broken tear in her palm. She stared down at it, her face twisting in something that was neither revulsion nor terror, but more akin to terrible, mind-warping grief. "My pain...my sorrow..." Lente shuddered as Fran struggled once more to get her feet beneath her and the very air around them bubbled with renewed violence. Lente's eyes, blood red and beyond mad jerked back to Fran. "You...you stripling infant...you empty child! You would corrupt my grief! You would make mock my anguish...?" Her fist clenched around the broken tear and she threw her head back in a behemoth bellow.

"DIE."

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**708 O.V: Archades – The Senatorial Office of Madrigalise Etteran**

'This is a disgrace to the great institution of the Senate!' Edwin Culdova personal secretary to Senator Etteran, yowled as he skipped along burgundy carpeting inches thick in the wake of the judicial hoard marauding through these hallowed halls.

'Yes,' the lead marauder agreed without skipping a beat, 'It is.' He shoved open the walnut enamelled double doors and plunged into the senator's private office. The scent of orange furniture polish and warm sunlight filtered through the threshold as milky veined marble columns and ornate grandeur gave way to a quieter refinement accented with the proud texture of mahogany and old gil sophistication that was so quintessentially senatorial.

'I don't know what you expect to find,' Edwin piped up yet again squeezing under and around the outstretched arm of the magister and into the office. 'But I am quite sure you will not find it _here_.' He fluttered his hands, like two trapped birds, and watched with frantic eyes as a trio of under judges in their officiously smart blood-crimson uniforms swept through his mistress' office, pawing at the papers neatly stacked on her desk, the books on her shelves, even poking at the potted palm in the corner.

'Your confidence in your mistress is duly noted,' the helmeted magister remarked, all inflection in his voice lost by the muffled grind of steel, 'However this is a sanctioned judicial search and if you do not leave I will be forced to take you into custody for impeding the due process of the law.' A metal face grill, banded like the bars of a dungeon cage, turned sightlessly towards Edwin and elegant bull horns gave artistic licence to notions of Infernal affairs and horrors unending. Senator Etteran's personal secretary swallowed dryly, his throat clicking audibly.

This was it, Edwin thought, this was the moment when the years old political friction between the militaristic judiciary and the upholders of civil law and freedom, the senate, came to a head in a physical manifestation. The inequity of the opponents, a magister majestic and savage in his head to toe steel compared to Edwin in his (rather suave if he did say so himself) puce suit was disturbingly evident and beautifully illustrated the heroic struggle the senate faced in opposing the judiciary every day. Now once again the forces of tyranny and oppression had once more taken up arms against the last great bastion of Archadian democracy and it fell to Edwin to strike a blow (figurative and literal) for the senate, and all decency in Archades as a whole. Edwin squared his shoulders, lifted his head and readied himself; this was his moment to shine…

'I shall tell the Senator about this! Just you wait – I'm telling Madrigalise!'

Quivering with adrenaline never to be put to use, and distantly hearing the sound of countless noble servants of the senate roll over in their graves in shame, Edwin's ankles pivoted towards the door as his feet propelled him out of the office at a speedy scuttle. The magister behind his metal mask watched impassively as the little man fled.

All in all, it was a sad day for democracy in the Empire.

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**Iona:**

Ethain had never seen anything like this in his life; he had never imagined anything so horrid. He would never have wanted to. Yet he was standing on a beach strewn with broken bodies watching the sky drown and the ocean climb to the heavens with the taste and reek of blood and brine thick as death on the air.

He wanted to run, yet something he could not describe kept him rooted to the spot – watching. He watched as Lanlet Viera, Fantl's sisters, fell and died. He watched as L'Moi collapsed upon the flipping great wall of earth the Viera had summoned up from the ocean bed with no more than the deft flick of a wrist and it was then that Ethain finally came to understand.

All of it...he finally understood. _This is the sound of one heart beating. _

Ethain had never been a brave man, nor had he been an especially good one. He had never truly aspired to be. Yet once there had been a girl...a special woman...who had made him want to be something he had no hope to be. So he had lied and told stories of exploits not his to speak of so that she would smile on him and laugh and favour him with that which was only hers to give. Once Ethain had wooed a woman, a very special woman, with lies and fantasy...and in so doing he had destroyed her.

_This is what we are and will be no more. _

He had a knife, nothing special but then again it didn't need to be. Moving like a ghost who has forgotten to die, Ethain started moving over the bloodied sand. The thorns and rough bark of the vines and roots forming the bottom of the earthen wall cut his palms deep as he hauled himself up the side, yet Ethain did not notice. Instead he was thinking only of a face he would never see again, a smile he had murdered, a child who would never live. He saw the lies he had fashioned into Fantl's noose. He saw the lies that had never been quite enough of a basis for reality and one hand over the other he climbed.

His grasping fingers curled over the edge of the wall just in time to hear a shrieking howl rend the air.

"DIE."

* * *

**The Ruins of Mount Bur-Omisace**

"Evasive manoeuvres; we need to put some distance between us and that..._thing_!"

Sirens screamed over the high-pressure serpent screech of broken pipes. The oddly medicinal scent of airship grade Mist filled the narrow passageway of the Dalmascan flagship as Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca hauled herself, arm over arm clutching the handrail, towards the cockpit of the ship. She needed to know what was going on! Not a half hour ago she had bid farewell to Al-Cid and watched him board a gentrified skiff bound for his own airship and now apparently she and her vessel were under attack.

"All personnel to your stations; gunners at the ready; fighter pilots to your pods – ready for launch on three...two..."

Something hit the ship. One moment the Royal flagship had been listing, somewhat off kilter but still mostly level in the air and then there was a great _whooshing _noise, a sound so huge it seemed soft, more felt than heard, and then Ashe was thrown across the passageway into the opposing wall and the ceiling was suddenly the floor and her entire damned ship was upside down.

"What in the...?" Ashe came back to her senses to find herself painfully bent around the handrail, moving was difficult as was breathing, she suspected the impact with the wall and the rail had broken at least one of her ribs. Yet that was not what concerned her, broken bones were nothing to the Dynast saviour after all. No rather it was the strange noiseless whistling she could feel thrumming through her bones and the shivering wall of the corridor.

"All hands abandon ship! Repeat all personnel make for the escape shuttles; this is not a drill!"

"Find and evacuate her majesty; she must be safe!"

There was a strange pressure pushing against Ashe's limbs making it difficult to move beyond even her physical discomfort. Fussily Ashe found herself wishing that the damnable whistling noise would desist; it was really quite annoying. Almost despite herself Ashe found herself struggling for a memory she did not even consciously recall retaining. A memory of overhearing a typically off-hand conversation between a certain sky pirate and his would-be apprentice about hull breaches.

_...One more thing to remember Vaan, though I dare say your limited cognitive capacity has probably already exceeded its limit... Tell me, have you ever heard of the Dead Air Whistle?_

_Huh? _

_...Right. I'll take that as a "no" shall I? The Dead Air Whistle, something that any sky pirate worth his salt needs to remember._

_Right...So what's this Dead Air Whistle do then? _

_Do? Well I dare say it doesn't do much of anything. Instead it is simply the painful accompaniment to certain death. I've heard having all the air sucked out of one's lungs in an instantaneous depressurized vacuum is not one of the more pleasurable ways to die. _

_Right...so what do I do if I hear it then?_

_Die. _

_Wha...! Wait...Balthier come back! What did you mean by that? _

Ashe opened her eyes, not even aware that she had closed them. It was surprisingly cold and the heaviness that was not heaviness glued her limbs flat to the wall even as her internal organs all rushed upwards towards her throat. The subliminal whistle was still thrumming through the corridor and Ashe could now feel that the ship was falling – at some rate.

_Her ship was falling from the air while she and all her guard were still inside! Damn it! _She was Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca – she would not die like this!

* * *

**Archades – Draklor/ Office CDB**

"Um – could you repeat that please?" Penelo fidgeted minutely in her perch on the edge of the old cluttered desk that still bore the name plaque embossed with a dead madman's initials proudly amid the mounds of papers that might, quite easily, contain the secrets of countless dangerous secrets and attempted to appear both attentive and knowledgeable as she breathed in dead air and the dust Smith's constant dusting kept filling the room with. The acrid stench of fire and burned Mist still pervaded every part of Draklor, a reminder that they really shouldn't be in here at all. There was a moment of pause as the four young Draklor cadets halted their animated debate to turn as one to stare at Penelo.

"Repeat what?" Byron the small plump boy with the dark curls and ruddy cheeks, the one who liked to act as de-facto leader and reminded Penelo almost painfully of Vaan (with an Archadian accent and the benefits of a ridiculously expensive education) frowned at her.

"Well," Penelo cleared her throat and reminded herself that she was a veteran Ivalice-saving heroine of considerable renown and should not be intimidated by these students just because they used poly-syllabic words the way she wielded magick, "all of it actually." She smiled brightly. "And if you could do so in smaller words that would be helpful."

Penelo and the so-called "cohort" had been in Draklor for several hours, ever since they had parted company with Balthier and Vaan (who were doing who knew what somewhere else in the Capital) tearing through Balthier's notes and trying not to cause anymore of the laboratory tower to fall down while they did so, all the while, in the case of the cohort at least, arguing constantly between themselves. Frankly Penelo was fed up.

"Oh," Selphie Gainsborough smiled sheepishly, "We apologise Ms Penelo. It's just that, well, if we've read these notes correctly," she held up a sheath of innocuous seeming papers, "it seems that Master Balthier has solved the Solarium Paradigm."

Penelo blinked, "Oh," she struggled to think of something to say to this, "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

The Cohort exchanged a number of complex silent looks in rapid fire non-verbal intellectual conference. Then Eirik Bjorndagen, the polite boy with the pale colouring cleared his throat. "Do you mean in purely scientific terms or are you referring to the socio-political ramifications of this discovery?" The boy scientist blushed, smiled painfully and shuffled his feet. "The answer will be different depending on the specific requirements of the question you see."

Penelo stared at him for a moment and forcibly reminded herself that it would be rude, not to mention dangerous, to unleash any magick in Draklor no matter how badly she wanted to start flinging around unpleasant status effects right now. "I just want to know if this Solari," her tongue tripped on the pronunciation of the unfamiliar word and she amended quickly to, "Are you saying this new invention of Balthier's could blow up part of Ivalice and start a war?" Another thought occurred to her, "Or does it have anything to do with the gods?" Balthier had proved himself as susceptible to being possessed by demi-divinities as his father after all and Penelo did not feel in the least guilty in thinking that Balthier was just as capable of being the villain his father had been – she knew him after all.

Once more the Cohort exchanged a less than reassuring look between themselves and Penelo braced herself almost unconsciously for very bad news. "Oh no," She breathed out when the Cohort as one turned to stare with fascinated intensity at the scorched and battered floor of Doctor Cid's office. "It does, doesn't it? This Solarium – is it worse than Nethicite?"

Byron opened his mouth to speak but it was then that Smith _blooped_ loudly, the feather duster attachment dropping to the floor as the sentient machine whirred out of the office, red laser eye light bouncing off soot blackened and half fallen corridor walls. Minutes later the five humes in the office heard the unmistakable sound of a bulkhead door being blown clear off its hinges.

Penelo was off in an instant, protect and shell engulfing her lithe frame instinctively as she ran down the corridor after the floating duster with the laser eyes. "Smith – wait, come back – Smith!"

Leaping over damp, foul smelling debris and the serpentine twists of ruptured pipes littering the floor Penelo rounded the corner passed the bulkhead door and stopped, lips poised to begin the incantation for libra. It was then that a thin gnarled hand darted like a viper from the shadows of a wrecked workshop and wrapped, vicelike, around Penelo's throat. Penelo reacted in an instance, ripping herself free and preparing an offensive spell, her eyes narrowing to catch a glimpse of the tall, slender figure of her attacker half hidden in the rank, smoky shadows of the workroom. Penelo's hands swirled gracefully in mid casting, her mouth opened once more – and Silence descended on her like an axeman's blade.

"Magick has no place in Archades' greatest seat of learning, young lady." A cool, sharp gentrified voice hissed from the shadows moments before a woman, grey and grim stepped forward. Her eyes, hard and unforgiving and aflame with the light of incredible focus flicked snakelike up and down Penelo's body as she once again reached out and grabbed her by the hair. It was only then that Penelo realised that she could not move; the spell of paralyse so subtle she had not even sensed the other woman cast it.

"My name is Madrigalise Etteran, young lady - and you will serve my purposes very well indeed."

Penelo could only blink, furious and helpless as the woman drew a simple, inexpensive dagger from a small sheath at her hip and, without fanfare or apology, drove the blade home in Penelo's abdomen.


End file.
